BUSINESS-process outsourcing (BPO) firm TaskUs is investing $25 million in the Philippines over the next three years to further expand its footprint with the end goal of increasing its work force to 10,000 and growing the business by more than 100 percent annually.
Bryce Maddock, TaskUs founder and chief executive officer (CEO), told the BusinessMirror they plan to infuse another half of the $50 million they have already invested in the country on the back of the BPO industry’s continuous growth here.
“Today, you’ve got an industry that is employing almost a million Filipinos. It’s remarkable,” he said. “And if you look at it, there are more people on the phone, answering customer-service calls than in any other country in the world, including India which is 10 times the size of the Philippines. So I think the future of the BPO industry looks like increasing amount of growth.”
Founded in 2008 in Santa Monica, California, TaskUs provides outsourced omni-channel customer care and back-office support to emerging companies globally.
It started to expand in the Philippines in 2009, with its first office in Bacoor, Cavite, doing e-mail and phone-customer services, as well as back office for content moderation, photoshop, and data entry, among other types of work.
In June 2014, it opened in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, providing e-mail support only, but soon will extend phone services to clients abroad.
“We have a small team in the US, but the bulk of our team is based here in the Philippines,” the top executive said, citing their combined 1,200 full-time employees to date. “We’ve got clients from the United States [US], Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and one client from Germany.”
To better serve them, TaskUs continues hiring more talents to bring it to 1,350 by year-end, and intends to double it annually to reach 10,000 by 2017.
In anticipation of this, Maddock said they will spend around $25 million to branch out in two more provincial areas next year.
“We’re looking at places like Dumaguete and Laoag in Ilocos Norte as potential next sites for our operations,” he said. “We want to go where we’re one of the first BPOs to be in the place, so we have the biggest impact on that community. We believe in bringing work to the people.” Apart from mainly serving the technology industry at present, TaskUs is keen on other growth sectors, such medicine and gaming, in the future.
“In the US, we have a big investment in healthcare because of the Obama Care regulations. So there’s a big opportunity as an outsourcing business to help the organizations in the US and become more efficient with how they spend money used in outsourcing,” the founder and CEO said.
“We also want to tap the video game industry because Filipinos like video games. And I like my employees being happy [doing that],” he added.
Inspired by the BPO’s continued success over the years, TaskUs is bullish to follow suit as it now has transitioned to a mid-sized company from a startup since its inception.
“[In] the first couple of years, we struggled. And since then we’ve grown the business pretty aggressive over a hundred percent year-over-year. This year, we’re still growing over a hundred percent from last year,” Maddock said.