Franklin Templeton International Services is setting up its business process outsourcing operations in Hyderabad to take care of the $314 billion group's global backoffice operations.

According to sources, the company has already taken on lease two premises in Banjara Hills wherein it plans to set up about a backoffice with a 1,000-seat capacity.

Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage

They have also informed that the company has already started its international operations on a limited scale.

Immediately after acquiring the Pioneer ITI's mutual fund business in May 2002, Franklin Templeton announced that they were planning to set up their BPO centre in India.

The US-based group, which has $314 billion assets under its management, assigned the mandate of building up its technology infrastructure for the BPO centre to the US-based Innova Solutions on build-own-transfer basis.

Innova has an offshore development centre in Hyderabad, which focuses primarily on financial services vertical and currently employs about 325 people.

Prior to the current assignment, it had a long-term relationship with Franklin Templeton Technologies, which is the technology arm that develops software applications for the group.

"We are still in the planning stage and our infrastructure is getting ready for the proposed launch. There are still lot of uncertainties at this stage about issues such as what percentage of our global back office work would be shifted to India, whether Hyderabad will be the only centre or we will have more centres in the country," Swaminathan, president of Franklin Templeton Services, said.