Valdar's Blog

The BPO sector is looking good. The $8.3 billion domestic BPO sector grew at a compound annual growth rate of 32 per cent during 2006-07. This has forced Nasscom to increase its concentration on the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, considering its prospects for further growth.

The recently appointed chairman of Nasscom, Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-chairman, Cognizent, commented on the side, during the graduation ceremony at S P Jain College of Management, “all along, we were concentrating on the IT sector, since BPO was still a small industry. But with a newer executive council that has more membership from the BPO industry, clearly the emphasis will be on BPO as well.” He added, “BPO industry had been quick to realign its business strategy in order to retain growth. The industry is also realigning and transforming and moving away from activities that are not going to be productive or give high margins and move to better value added segments.”

Mr. Narayanan further stressed, as for the talent shortage, he believes that the three-pronged approach that Nasscom has started will carry on. The first among the three is to encourage creative collaboration between the academic institutes within the industry so that the relevant curriculum is incorporated in the courses. Second, is to continue with the initiative of finishing schools and create a new eco-system and finally to urge the government to deregulate educational institutes. This according to him is the step in the right direction.

“Security will be a prime focus. Apart from educating the organisation on the need to have global standards, we plan to create some institutional infrastructure or a self regulatory body in order to make sure that the issue remains on the agenda for a longer time,” said Narayanan. He also pointed out that his present concern, is to get sufficient skilled people to meet the demand of the fast growing industry both for the IT and BPO sectors, and providing innovating and secure environment in the functioning of both