Other employees may transfer to Mahindra Satyam to work on projects for Cargill or other clients that contract with the Indian firm, the spokesman said.

In some cases when a company hires an outsourcer for projects, its employees are transferred immediately, which occurred last year after signed an outsourcing contract. Some of the transferred workers have since been laid off.

Fargo may seem like an unlikely place for a service delivery center, but the area has a technology legacy.

The city was the home Great Plains Software, an ERP provider, until it was acquired by Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion. Today, Microsoft runs operations in Fargo to develop and support its Dynamics ERP and CRM software, as well as some other products.

Along with Cargill, the delivery center has signed up a telecom customer, said Lakshmanan Chidambaram, senior vice president, sales and operations at Americas Mahindra Satyam.