Indian BPO sector to grow by 15 p.c. this year

BANGALORE, INDIA: India's Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector is expected to grow 15-16 percent this fiscal, a top official of the industry group said Wednesday.

The back-office outsourcing business registered a turnover of $12.4 billion in the last financial year (2009-10). "We expect the growth this year to be 15 to 16 percent higher than last year," National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) President Som Mittal told reporters here.

He said the European debt crisis had not affected the business. Yet, "We don't know where it (the Europe crisis) is heading. We are waiting and watching," Mittal said on the margins of NASSCOM BPO Strategy Summit that began here on Wednesday.

He said though the BPO industry has grown enormously in the last 10 years there are many challenges to tackle. "The Indian BPO sector is facing huge challenges in the areas of talent and infrastructure," Mittal said.

A note prepared for the two-day summit says "several new upcoming areas such as procurement services, healthcare outsourcing and knowledge services, which include services such as research and analytics, legal services outsourcing, financial research and data management, are expected to aid the growth of the BPO industry in the future."

"The long term potential for the BPO industry is immense- the addressable market for BPO services is expected to expand four fold to $895-980 billion, representing an opportunity which is 50 per cent bigger than the overall IT opportunity. Almost 80 per cent of this incremental growth in addressable market is going to come from current non-core markets," said the note.