An Indian outsourcing company is to create 1,000 jobs in Northern Ireland over the next two years.

ICICI OneSource, one of India's largest business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, is to create the jobs at two sites in Northern Ireland.

The first is due to be up and running by the end of next month at a site in Belfast and staff are already being recruited. The hunt for a second location is already underway.

ICICI OneSource's decision to expand in Europe comes as a number of companies want to outsource their call centre operations but don't want that work migrated to India.

The firm's chief exec Ananda Mukerji said: "Our Northern Ireland centres will be our first outsourcing operation based in Europe. We have a strong market presence in the UK and we see significant demand for high-end business processing which our Northern Ireland centres will be ideally placed to fulfil."

With its HQ in Mumbai, ICICI OneSource employees more than 8,000 staff and generated revenues of $74m for the year 2004 - 2005. It provides BPO services for firms in the financial services and telecoms industry, among others. ®