Domestic call centre industry to touch Rs 8500 cr

Mumbai, Feb 12: The domestic call centre industry will touch a revenue of Rs 8,500 crore this fiscal, growing at the rate of 65 per cent, a survey has revealed.

According to the survey, conducted by Dataquest, a leading IT industry magazine, the industry posted a revenue of Rs 5,200 crore in the last fiscal with the growth pegged at 42 per cent. The growth rate for the current fiscal was twice the growth rate recorded by the BPO export sector in 2006-07, a release said.

The captive call centres (centres operated to service company's own clients) contribute nearly 70 per cent at Rs 3,598 crore. The outsourced call centre industry (those servicing the needs of third party clients) posted revenues of Rs 1,602 crore. Of this, the organised players (classified as those employing more than 200 people) contributed Rs 1,097 crore while the revenue from the unorganised players added to about Rs 505 crore.

The domestic call centre industry employed over 2,80,000 agents at the end of December 2007 as per the Dataquest survey. Of this, the captive call centres employed 1,30,000 agents, while the outsourced industry employed more than 150,000. According to the survey, the top 10 outsourced players employed 71,645 people.

In Dataquest's rankings of the outsourced players, Intelenet Global Services took the top spot with revenue of Rs 137.5 crore in 2006-07. Aegis BPO Services and Infovision ranked second and third on the Dataquest list with revenues of Rs 132 crore and Rs 119 crore in 2006-07 respectively.

Interestingly, the top 10 players contributed Rs 749 crore or 47 per cent of the outsourced industry size, showing the fragmented nature of the entire sector.

UNI