The Hindu Business Line : `Karnataka is No 1 BPO hub'

LEVERAGING the prowess of its IT industry, Karnataka has emerged as a leading ITES-BPO destination in the country, according to a study conducted by Nasscom-KPMG. The findings of the study "Choosing a location for offshore operations in India" were released on Wednesday at the Nasscom's sixth ITES-BPO strategy summit in Bangalore.

The study covered about 13 clusters across 10 States including Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar, Bangalore, Chandigarh-Mohali, Chennai, Hyderabad-Secunderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai-Navi Mumbai-Thane, New Delhi-Gurgaon-Noida, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Visakhapatnam. The 10 States approximately account for 85 per cent of the IT/ITES exports.

"The objective of the study is two-pronged; firstly to have readily available, relevant and reliable information with respect to location choice within India for potential investors/customers and secondly, to help the industry and the local governments understand what drives ITES-BPO location preferences and hence guide efforts to improve attractiveness for ITES-BPO," said Mr Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom.

The framework used for assessment included human resources (number of graduates, average salary for ITES-BPO employees, attrition rate), infrastructure (availability and cost of facilities/utilities and quality of life), ITES-BPO focus (number of companies and nature of ITES-BPO work, policy support and positioning) among others.

"Karnataka is currently ranked attractive on all parameters in assessing a ITES-BPO location. In terms of future attractiveness, the outlook is positive but the government and the industry need to address the infrastructure and human resource challenges," said Mr Karnik.

Karnataka's attractiveness stems from the fact that 80 global firms have set up their R&D centres in the State, which is ranked amongst the seven leading states in India for technical skill. "With more and more captive and third party service providers moving their high-end support services to Karnataka, the State is expected to emerge as a leading BPO centre in India by 2006," Mr Karnik added.

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