Booming Telecom, Financial industries help BPO services grow

Kochi, Sep 27 (UNI) Firstsource Solutions, among the top BPO companies in India, expects its domestic business to increase from two per cent of the total revenue last year to ten per cent this fiscal, company's Executive Vice-President (HR) Aashu Calapa said today.

Addressing a press conference here, Mr Calapa said the growth drivers for the domestic business were the telecom, banking, financial services and insurance sectors.

To service these rapidly growing industries, Firstsource Solutions had set up operations in Tier Two cities such as Trichy, Kochi, Vijayawada, Puducherry, Hubli and Indore, he said.

''It has been our strategic policy to move our operations to the Tier Two cities, from where a large pool of the talent comes to the metros,'' he said.

Within six months of starting its operations in Kochi, the company had an employee strength of 500 people.

While admitting that the company faced an attrition rate of almost 42 per cent, he said this was largely due to the growth in the sector, which provided plenty of job opportunities.

While an appreciating rupee had had a ''marginal impact'' on business and was a matter of concern, the BPO sector was by and large continuing to see high growth rates.

Firstsource, which netted a revenue of Rs 840 crore last year, had seen its Q1 turnover going up by 31 per cent compared to the same period last year. The company had achieved a turnover of Rs 282 crore in Q1, he said.

Quoting a NASSCOM study, Mr Calapa said the BPO industry worldwide was estimated at about 13.4 billion US Dollars, with India taking the lion's share of 47 per cent. The sector is estimated to grow to 25 billion USD by 2010.

''We expect the BPO sector to grow at a brisk rate in the next three to five years,'' he added.

Asked about the criticism levelled against the BPO sector of exposing youngsters to an artificial work environment, where they have to adopt false names and accents to interact with overseas clients, Mr Calapa said this was no longer an issue with the industry.

''Most of our clients tell their customers that they are offshoring their services. All our employees use their own names,'' he added.

Firstsource's 75 clients include six 'Fortune Global 500' banks, two 'Fortune Global 500' telecommunications companies and three 'Fortune 100' healthcare companies. The company has a global delivery model with 25 centres in India, the US, UK, Argentina and the Philippines.

While most of its clients are in the US and UK at present, it is looking at Europe and the domestic Indian market to increase its business, he said.

UNI