Indian Outsourcer To Add 3,000 StaffersIndian Outsourcer To Add 3,000 Staffers

BANGALORE, India — In a sign that outsourcing is moving beyond software services to include software product development, Persistent Systems has announced massive hiring plans.

Persistent, already one of India’s largest companies focused exclusively on outsourced software product development services and support with 2,000 employees, will recruit an additional 800 engineers by year's end. It will also ready a facility for another 2,500 staff by next March. "The software product development space is developing rapidly and the market has witnessed remarkable growth in the last several quarters," said Anand Deshpande, chairman and managing director of Persistent Systems (Pune, India). "Our expansion plans have been charted out to meet this growing market demand."

According to an industry report, the global market for outsourced product development is pegged at $3 billion in 2005 and expected to grow to as much as $11 billion by 2008. Growth drivers are telecommunications, connectors, RFID, data infrastructure, security and life sciences.

Persistent has deployed 200 commercial software applications, and was the first Asian recipient of Intel Corp.'s IA 64 fund.