Dinanath Kholkar to head Tata Consultancy's BPO division

MUMBAI: Tata Consultancy Services has appointed Dinanath Kholkar to succeed Abid Ali Neemuchwala as the global head of its $2.3-billion BPO division. The country’s largest IT services company has also split its BPO business into banking and non-banking divisions, people with knowledge of the matter told ET.

Kholkar was earlier chief executive and managing director of TCS eServe – the back office operation of Citibank that TCS acquired in 2008-2009.

Kholkar, who joined TCS in 1990, took up his new assignment in February, according to his profile on business-oriented social networking service LinkedIn. Earlier in the same month, Neemuchwala had quit TCS after a 23-year stint to join rival Wipro as chief operating officer. Wipro had announced Neemuchwala’s appointment earlier this week.

According to persons quoted earlier, Kholkar will lead the overall strategy and Ashok Pai will head the company’s nonbanking BPO business. Pai has served as the global head for domain BPO services since May 2013. Kholkar will remain in charge of banking business.

“Part of the reason for the split (of the BPO business) is that TCS is looking to increase the contribution from the nonbanking side of the business,” a person with knowledge of the company’s plans said.

“They are behind their target to get $3 billion in revenue by 2015. This is also a way of diversifying the business.”

TCS had not responded to ET’s query till press time. TCS’ BPO revenue has been very Citigroupdependent after the company acquired the US bank’s back office division for $505 million in 2008. That year, the unit expected revenue of about $278 million. People estimate that TCS gets over $500 million in revenue every year from Citigroup.

TCS had appointed Neemuchwala as head of the BPO unit in 2009.