Bangalore, Oct 7 : World's leading communication services provider Cable & Wireless grew by 35 percent in the first six months (April-Sep) of this fiscal despite the economic slowdown, a top company official said Wednesday.

"The global recession was challenging, as there were delays in decision-making by enterprises on investments in the communications infrastructure space. Yet we have done well to achieve 35 percent growth in the first half," Cable & Wireless India managing director Sunanda Das told IANS by phone.

Das, however, did not disclose the growth in revenue terms, as the British-based will announce its financial results for the first half (H1) Nov 5 in London.

"In spite of slowdown and uncertainty, we have done well by getting new business from existing and new customers, including Marks & Spencer and Reliance India," Das said.

According to industry sources, the service provider had over 30 percent cumulative growth per annum (CGPA) in the last four-five years since it commenced India operations.

"We signed up 10-12 new customers across verticals like IT and IT-enabled services, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), retail and healthcare. With the worst hopefully getting over, we see better growth during the second half (July-Dec) as the pipeline is good," Das disclosed.

Of the 150 customers it has in India, about 60 percent of them are domestic and 40 percent international, with enterprises across verticals contributing about 90 percent of revenue.

The $3.7-billion global firm offers communications services such as IP (internet protocol), data, voice and hosting to large enterprise, reseller and carrier customers.

Since its foray into India 2004, the company has secured license for national and international long distance calls to provide a wide range of communications services to Indian and overseas enterprises.

The parent company has invested $52 million in expanding its India operations, including infrastructure in the last two years.

The value-added network services include managed IP-voice, bandwidth connect, managed video conferencing and managed security solutions.

Leading carriers like Bharti and Tata are some of its marquee customers.

As part of its foray into South Asia, the subsidiary provides its services to state-run Sri Lanka Telecom in the island country and Pakistan Telecom in Pakistan.

"We are on the verge of bagging a similar service deal in Bangladesh," Das said.

In line with business growth, the company has ramped up its workforce by 15 percent to take the total to 400 engineers. Attrition level remained at 5.5 percent.

The company's network operations centre in India's tech hub (Bangalore) caters to about 3,000 global customers, which is about 50 percent of its total base worldwide.(IANS)