Thursday, April 02, 2009

BPOS ADVISED TO THINK RURAL

K.S. Anandan, Chennai
The Asian Age

Post the global financial crisis, the Indian IT and BPO industry is facing huge profit margin pressures and prospects of negative growth threatens many because of the slowdown in orders from the US market.

How would the industry survive the difficult phase? Experts say that expanding BPOs to rural markets will bring down the cost of operations considerably. At the same time, developing BPOs to serve the domestic banking, insurance, sales and after sales services, would make the industry more viable.

"About 2 million people are working in the BPO industry, mainly in information processing and call centers. Of this, 50 percent of the people are working in the voice BPO. The entire voice BPO can be shifted to the rural centers to cut cost and make it more lean and efficient in the present economic slowdown," says Pradeep Nevatia, managing director, Ripcord Consulting Guild, a company offering rural BPO and campus BPO services. He was instrumental in setting up the first rural BPO in the country.

He said the recession period is the right time to set up BPO in rural centers. It will ensure low cost of operations and with the right training, one can ensure high productivity and quality output.

Echoing the same view, Nasscom’s K Purushothman said: "The rural BPO gives tremendous opportunity for growth. This will help brand India as a destination to be the BPO hub for the global market. Nasscom’s initiatives in rural BPO show that we can not only offer low cost service but the best logic and quality."

In addition, domestic companies in banking, insurance and sales and after sales offer huge potential to expand BPO operations in India. For instance, the PSU banks and insurance companies, besides scores of large homegrown companies have not started these operations.

0 comments: