Genpact, a business process outsourcing company in India, is investing in a training joint venture with NIIT, a large Indian training company. Genpact's entry into the training business reflects the extent to which Indian companies are finding it tough to attract and retain top quality talent.

"Our focus is not so much on profits, but to have access to top quality staff trained at the institute," said a spokesman for the company on Wednesday. Genpact is to hold 25% of the equity of the training joint venture, called NIIT Institute of Process Excellence, with NIIT holding the rest of the equity. The joint venture will be managed by both companies.

As Indian industry shifts focus from voice-based services to business-processing functions, there is a strong demand for professionals with business-processing knowledge in addition to voice capabilities, the companies said.

Genpact was the Indian back-office subsidiary for GE Capital, until it was spun off in 2005 as an independent BPO company. The company has 34,300 staff in India and other locations.

As the supply of quality staff tightens, outsourcing companies are looking for new ways to get access to talent, and to train them. India's second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies, for example, trains some of its recruits at a separate campus it set up in Mysore near Bangalore.

The joint venture between NIIT and Genpact will set up training facilities in Indian cities such as Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune in the first year of operation. It plans to train 6,000 to 10,000 staff in the first year.

The joint venture also plans to set up operations in Dalian, Changchun, Shanghai and Xian in China, and Manila in the Philippines in the next phase. These are locations where Genpact has services delivery centers, the spokesman said. The partners expect the new institute to have more than 250 learning centers by 2012.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.