Opportunities in U.S
With the passing of the U.S. healthcare reforms bill, a billion dollar opportunity has opened up for the Indian outsourcers, however there are fears that other new bills passed in the U.S. Senate to protect jobs could spoil the party. "Protectionism is growing rapidly and every other day a new bill is passed in the U.S, which can impact the Indian BPO industry," said Som Mittal, President of Nasscom, during in the inaugural session of the Nasscom BPO Strategy Summit 2010.
The issue of protectionism was echoed by Vikram Talwar, Chairman of Nasscom BPO Forum, who highlighted the recently proposed bill that aims to reduce outsourcing of U.S. jobs. The new bill was proposed by Senator Charles Schumer, who said he will push legislation to make companies inform customers when their calls were being transferred outside the U.S. and charge companies for those transferred calls.
Coming out of recession, Mittal pointed out that there is more stability in the BPO sector, which started with a market value of $1.6 billion and has grown to $14.6 billion in the last decade. Nasscom expects that India's back-office outsourcing business will post a growth of 15-16 percent in the year to March 2011 on growing demand from overseas clients. "Despite all challenges like global economic recession, BPO industry grew six percent globally last year," Talwar added.
The Indian BPO industry has now started spreading its wings to the smaller cities and towns after focusing on the big cities for all many years. "Indian BPO is facing huge challenges in the areas of talent and infrastructure and in the coming days, the area of growth for the BPO industry will be from small cities, which has a large talent pool" Mittal added.
Harsh Manglik, Chairman, Nasscom, elaborated on the emergence of rural BPOs and how it can benefit the overall society. According to him, around 60 percent of BPO employees are from the tier-2 and tier-3 cities, so the concept of rural BPOs will make them stay closer to their homes. Manglik explained how HDFC Bank set up a BPO center in Thirupati, which houses 550 employees, who are doing the same work which 1000 people were doing in Mumbai.
