Bangalore, Dec 15 (IANS) Infosys Technologies Tuesday said it has opened a development centre in Brazil to service clients in that South American country as well as Brazilian subsidiaries of global customers.
The company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Infosys Tecnologia Do Brasil, is located in Belo Horizonte, the third largest metropolitan area in Brazil after Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Infosys said in a statement.

This is the third development centre of Infosys in Latin America. It has two centres in Mexico.

“The company has been investing and strengthening its position in Latin America to expand its footprint in the region and also to leverage the near shore advantage of similar time zones for global clients,” the statement said.

Infosys chief executive and managing director S. Gopalakrishnan described Brazil as the largest IT and BPO services market in Latin America, with the eighth highest IT and BPO services spend in the world.

“The growth forecasts for the IT-BPO sector in Brazil have remained high despite the global economic crisis,” Gopalakrishnan added.

“Along with our centres in Mexico, our presence here will strengthen our ability to address both Spanish and Portuguese speaking markets in Latin America, driving our business growth in the region.”

According to V.G. Dheeshjith, the company’s head of new markets and services division, the Brazilian centre would offer full range of IT consulting, IT services and BPO for global and Brazilian clients across industries.

“The development centre, which has already begun operations, is currently serving several clients. In this center, most of the employees will be Brazilian nationals complemented by our employees deputed from our global development centres,” Dheeshjith said.