Banking software company i-flex will add about 1200 software professionals in the next five months to become a 5000-strong organisation by March 2005 with most of the recruitment taking place at its Pune and Chennai development centres.

"The company's total strength is 3800 at present and by March 2005, we will be about 5000 people," N R K Raman, COO, i-flex told PTI in New Delhi.

"We are adding on an average 600 people every quarter. This quarter we have added more than 600 people. This will continue," he said.

"To accommodate this rising number of people, we are expanding our facility in Pune, where we have a capacity of 200 people at present and we are expanding that to 600 by March 2005 and 1000 next year-end," Raman said.

After augmenting its capacity in the Pune centre, i-flex has taken additional space to undertake expansion in Chennai, where the company hopes to grow from 300 people to 600 by March next year.

In Mumbai, the company has taken land near Goregaon to consolidate the multiple offices there into one single office and the construction of that building has just started and is expected to be complete in the next 12-18 months. The centre can accommodate 1400 people.

The company's development centres are in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Pune. i-flex has a small development centre in Singapore and one near-shore centre in New York.