The company said its business process outsourcing (BPO) business in India has global capabilities to provide an extensive range of services to customers and plans to ramp up its BPO headcount in India to 7,800 over the next year.

"HP has no plans to sell or divest its business process outsourcing (BPO) business," Arundhati Chakraborty, business development and communications head - India, HP, said.

"At present, we have approximately 6,500 employees in our India centres and we expect to expand our headcount by 20 per cent over the next year," she added.

The move comes amidst an emerging trend among MNCs to sell off their India offshore business. Over two-dozen multi-national firms are said to be mulling over plans to sell off their India offshore units, following the precedent set by firms such as General Electric (GE) and British Airways in the past

HP, currently the world''s largest information technology corporation, is known worldwide for its printers and personal computers. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, US, it has a global presence in the fields of computing, printing, and digital imaging, and also provides software and services.

The company, which once catered to engineering and medical markets, now market household products such as cameras and ink cartridges found in grocery and department stores.

HP posted $91.7 billion in annual revenue in 2006 compared to $91.4 for IBM, making it the world''s largest technology vendor in terms of sales. HP is now No. 1 worldwide in personal computer shipments, surpassing rival Dell, market research firms Gartner and IDC reported in October 2006. According to Gartner, the gap between HP and Dell widened substantially at the end of 2006, with HP taking a near 3.5 per cent market share lead.