BPO

Hindustan Times, India
11/09/2004
BPO CLOSER HOME. New Indian initiative.
Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies’ back-office subsidiary, Progeon, recently opened an office in the Czech Republic and Mphasis BFL's arm, MSource, in Mexico. All this is a part of the Indian initiative to cater to outsourcers’ demand to back up data in diverse locations, among other considerations. The other factor is to tap non-English speaking clients. India handles 80 per cent of the offshore outsourcing business, earning $3.6 billion and employing 245,000 people, “six times as many as five years ago”, principally in key locations such as Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. techrepublic.com.

INDIAN IT’S LATEST FOE. Can you name it?
Gartner did a study of the “Indian information technology services companies' dominance of the global IT market”. The conclusion it reached was that this very dominance “may put them at risk of losing India's growing domestic market for IT services to overseas rivals if they do not refocus on their own backyard”. Gartner estimates the Indian market growing “by more than 17 per cent on a compounded annual basis through 2008”. Indeed, “India's market is growing faster than those of regional counterparts Singapore, China and Australia,” claims Craig Baty, group vice president and chief of research at Gartner. The report cautions: "Just as Indian players are trying to enter the … US markets, … global players are increasingly realizing the importance of India as an outsourcing destination and are setting up development centers." What the “new players in the Indian market” are doing is to “use local delivery centers not only to service their offshore business but also to target the local IT services market here.” A latest instance is IBM bagging “a contract worth about $750 million from wireless services provider Bharti Tele-Ventures earlier this year, causing consternation within the Indian IT industry”.