Maulik Parekh, the Indian-born former chief of call center operator TeleTech Philippines, seems to have made the country his permanent base after taking a new job as the head of PLDT’s outsourcing arm.

Parekh, who led TeleTech’s expansion in the provinces and presided over its growth as one of the country’s biggest – if not the biggest – BPO companies, has formally assumed the post as the new president and CEO of SPi Global Solutions.

SPi Global Solutions is a company that resulted in the merger of data outsourcing operator SPi Technologies and call center firm ePLDT Ventus.

SPi Technologies was previously owned by the Ayala group before PLDT, through its Internet arm, ePLDT, acquired the company and combined with ePLDT Ventus to form SPi Global Solutions.

As the top official of SPi Global Solutions, Parekh is in charge of a team of more than 14,000 employees scattered all over the US, Europe, the Philippines, India, and Vietnam.

He also leads a management team that includes Peter Maquera, president and CEO of SPi Technologies, and Helen Marquez, president and chief executive officer of ePLDT Ventus.

Parekh has a Bachelor of Engineering from Gujarat University in India and an International MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in the US. He took on his new role after making a short sabbatical that took him to his home country India and Nepal, among other countries. Just after he arrived in the country from his vacation, he initially told this writer that he planned to put up a HR management and counseling firm focused on empowering workers, especially those in the BPO sector.

As an executive vice president of Asia operations for TeleTech, Parekh is also credited for growing the company’s Asian presence from 6,000 employees to over 22,000 employees across 14 sites. In the Philippines, the company has about 17,000 workers.

Prior to joining TeleTech, Maulik was with Dish Network, a satellite TV provider in the USA, where he initiated the company’s offshoring strategy in India and the Philippines. He led the direct sales division and managed an operational team of more than 4,000 employees.