Call World Technologies, a joint venture between SoftProsystems and Frontline Soft, has closed down its operations and is up for sale now.

The ailing 120 -seat call center was till recently servicing giants such as AT&T and MasterCard for outbound telemarketing services.

Frontline Soft holds 51 per cent stake in the Rs 7 crore (Rs 70 million) equity of Call World, while SoftPro invested Rs 1.8 crore (Rs 18 million) for a 26 per cent stake.

In fact, both the companies had plans to rope in strategic partners to pick the remaining equity.

Explaining the reasons for exiting the contact centre business, Krishna Chand Akkineni, the managing director of SoftPro, said that it had become unviable to run smaller call centres in view of the payment defaults.

Call World was unable to collect receivables from many of its US-based customers, he said. It is learnt that the centre could not collect receivables to the tune of $7 to $8 million.

However, SoftPro is confident of recovering its investments in the call centre by selling off the infrastructure.

Chand said the company was confident of achieving Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 million) turnover in the current financial year, as against Rs 1.73 crore (Rs 17.3 million) revenues posted for the previous fiscal.

About Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) of the projected revenues would accrue from the lease rentals, he added.

The company let out more than two-thirds of SoftPro Heights, its 90,000-sqft campus at Cyberabad, to Sierra Atlantic and Click 2 Learn.

"We expect to get a mandate to run a dedicated development centre for SoftPhase, a US-based software company. The centre will initially have about 10 people and might expand up to 30 people over a period of time," A Mallikharjuna Rao, the ED of SoftPro, said.

The US company has a development centre in Delhi, which it proposes to shift to Hyderabad.