Accenture has confirmed that it is in talks with top Indian telecom operators including Bharti Airtel for strategic outsourcing of new business processes, as well as management consulting projects.

Operators are now looking ahead to sustain profitability and outsource non-core functions. Experts from the industry claim that these consulting and outsourcing contracts could be comparatively small in size at between $50 million and $200 million, but will bring high-margin business for Accenture.

Confirming the talks, Martin I Cole, group chief executive for communications and high tech for Accenture, said, “We are currently in discussions with the top four telcos, apart from the new telecom entrants." He added, "We are having discussions around the outsourcing of processes such as value added services, which include music and video offerings, apart from the overall solution delivery platform," reports the Economic Times.

Bharti is one of the firms that initiated the telecom outsourcing wave back in 2004, when it asked IBM to take over its IT and back-office processes. Now, having achieved over 80 million subscribers, it wants to focus more on sustaining profitability and differentiating itself by offering innovative services.

Accenture may have been late in tapping the lucrative Indian telecom market, but with its ongoing discussions for strategic outsourcing, it is all set to gain. It earlier helped Virgin Mobile to establish its Indian Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) service within only a few months. The company is hoping that similar opportunities will come its way in the area of strategic consulting. X