The Indian BPO Advantage


Despite facing competition from a number of countries, India still enjoys an upper hand in the world of Business Process Outsourcing. The main emerging challengers to India are countries like the Philippines, China, Mexico, Ireland, Canada, Russia and South Africa.

The BPO segment, which was virtually a non-existent segment until a few years ago, has risen to become a $2 billion industry in a short span of time. BPO brought in the much-needed new revenue streams at an additional cost from the same clients. These players are now being able to leverage on their global marketing infrastructure and established client relationships.

While India has the advantage of skilled manpower, linguistic capabilities, low labour costs, favourable time zone, sound Internet and telecom connectivity, the Philippines in particular has also improved tremendously. So India should be on its guard right from now to maintain its position intact.

The Philippines advantage, besides skilled and English educated work force and good telecom infrastructure, is familiarity with American work culture. However, the limitations of these competitors are that in China for instance, there is still a lack of English speaking capability. Mexico is good for low end jobs only, Ireland has a smaller talent pool, Canada and South Africa are costlier than India, while Russia has poor infrastructure and poor linguistic capabilities. Hence India still has the leading edge in the BPO industry, but it should keep on improvising to maintain its stability.

Jesmine