Over a two-year period, the unit will come up at the Salt Lake Electronic Complex here on a built-up area of 100,000 square feet to be constructed on three acres.

"We are going to employ 1,500 people in the centre to be operational by the second quarter of 2006," Gecis Global president and CEO Pramod Bhasin said.

"The facility will deal with high-end specialised services, including analytics, finance and accounting and software solutions as well as voice and transaction based processes."

Bhasin signed a land allotment agreement with West Bengal's IT Secretary G.D. Gautama.

"We are going to hire high-end doctorates and masters for research-based jobs," he said.

"We are also interested in collaborating with the state government and the state's universities and educational institutions to offer value-based education in specialised subjects like risk analysis, financial analysis, GAAP accounting and others.

"The academia-industry collaboration will prove beneficial for the growth of the already existing talent pool in the state. We will shortly identify the institutes with whom tie-ups will be made."

Gecis, mainly catering to General Electric's business units worldwide, operates from its centres at Gurgaon, Jaipur, Bangalore and Hyderabad in India.

Gecis also has centres in China, Hungary, Mexico, North America and Western Europe.

It is aiming for revenues of $750 million by 2007.

"We will touch $500 million in revenues by this year and expect around 30 percent growth in 2006," Bhasin said.

"The company derives 75 percent of its revenue from domestic operations and 25 percent from foreign operations."