ISHANI DUTTAGUPTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JANUARY 29, 2005 12:17:10 AM]
The accent reminds you of Pierce Brosnan. The name, of course, is not Bond but Houston.
And ever since India's HCL Technologies took over the Belfast-based contact centre Apollo from BT, Kevin Houston, GM, UK, HCL BPO, can’t even enjoy the ‘astronautical’ pun that his name provided “of a guy called Houston running a call centre named Apollo”. No regrets about that, however, and he enjoys his new status of being among the few senior execs in Belfast who reports to Indian bosses in Noida, UP.
“Three years ago, when HCL acquired the majority stake in Apollo, along with the 350 other employees, I too felt threatened about our new bosses, who were culturally so different from us.
But today, the company has emerged as an example of reverse investment into UK from India and created huge employment opportunities taking the staff strength up to 1,600.
Around £2 million have been invested in infrastructure,” says Houston who had previously worked only with European and American companies like Stream International and Bank of Ireland.
He is, in fact, proud of the fact that Invest Northern Ireland, a government trade body, has sanctioned a loan of £9,20,000 to HCL BPO’s Belfast operations in recognition of the employment opportunities created by the company.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1005015.cms
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