Chennai sought after for offshoring services: report

Chennai, Apr 2 (UNI) At a time when the country was maintaining its lead in global offshoring services, Chennai has emerged as the most attractive Indian city for offshoring services beating traditional top cities.

''Chennai is the most attractive Indian city for offshoring services beating tradtional top cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and the National Capital Region (Gurgaon, Faridabad and Noida)'', says A.T. Kearney's Indian City Services Attractiveness Index 2005, a report by the US-based A T Kearney, a management consulting firm.

Releasing the report, AT Kearney Principal Arjun Avtar Sethi said that Hyderabad was a close second. Kolkata was also emerging as a credible alternative to cities with more established offshoring services industries, which include information technology, ITES and BPO.

He said the survey assessed Chennai, Hyderabad, NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Kochi and Jaipur for their attractiveness for placing offshoring services. The cities have been benchmarked as attractive on three major categories -- financial costs, people skill and availability and the business environment.

Chennai emerged as the clear leader in all categories followed by Hyderabad, NCR and Bangalore.

Chennai was the leader based on available labour and low attrition rates. Bangalore suffers due to high attrition rate.

The attrition rate was about 50 to 55 per cent in Mumbai and Bangalore as against 35 to 40 per cent in Chennai. This difference of ten to 15 per cent has a significant effect for companies on training costs, the report said.

Due to lack of available skilled labour, Kochi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Jaipur were less attractive in people skills.

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