A company dedicated to delivering technical services from India direct to large corporate clients in the West is looking for a magic circle client for its outsourcing solutions.

The company is also set to target large IT suppliers to the legal sector. MBT is a joint venture between British Telecom and Mahindra, one of India's largest technology and manufacturing conglomerates.

Melvyn Burgoyne, MBT's head of business development, claims the company can deliver bespoke IT services at a lower cost than UK-based service providers. In addition to outsourcing, MBT aims to provide large corporations across all sectors of industry in the UK, Europe and the US with in-house IT support and development teams of Indian expatriates. MBT has 600 of its 2,500 staff based in the UK.

Burgoyne identified low labour costs combined with a good track record in innovation and software development as the main advantages for a company outsourcing – in whole or in part – its IT function to MBT. He claimed major projects could be completed in a shorter time because of India's favourable recruitment market and labour-intensive working culture. Burgoyne said the quality of service delivery would meet Western requirements, but admitted that obstacles to the uptake of MBT's services include
stereotyped images of India as backward. In fact, he pointed out that MBT has four state-of-the-art operation centres in Poona and Bombay.