Industry-Academia tie ups will help BPO sector: Som Mittal

Bangalore, Aug 13 (UNI) NASSCOM President Som Mittal today advocated launch of proactive programme between the IT industry and academic to meet the ever growing talent needs of the sector.

Speaking at the Accenture India premises here after witnessing the signing of MoU between Indira Gandhi National Open University and Accenture India to develop a BPO specific diploma programme, he said a recent NASSCOM-Everest report indicated the potential for a five-fold growth of the Indian BPO sector from the present USD 11 billion to USD 50 billion by 2012.

"This type of initiative like introducing industry specific courses will be very critical to sustain the growth curve of the BPO industry in India. An adequately skilled workforce will have to be an integral part of the BPO industry to achieve the targetted goal," he said.

He said India had played a significant part in the globalisation of services to become a world leader in the BPO sector.

"The very demographics of the world is changing. Now outsourcing or offshoring has lost its meaning with drastic demographic changes we are witnessing," he said.

However the BPO industry should now start develop skills having multi language capability and not just depend on English. It as also important that the BPO indutry spread its foot print beyond the major seven cities in the country where 80 per cent of the work was now being carried out.

He said it was important to note that out of 2.4 lakh graduates the country produced per annum 55 per cent of the students came from semi-urban or rural areas. These people should be equipped with enough soft skills to that they become employable in service and technology intensive sectors. The proposed diploma in BPO was the right step in this direction, he said.

With the country producing 4.5 technical graduates technological companies were better off when it comes to availabity of talent, but it was not so in case of BPO.

"Building a skilled force by offering this IGNOU programme which accomodate one million students is exciting. This is an experiment the World would be watching with interest," he said.

Mr Mittal said NASSCOM would soon bring out a 'Career Guide' on IT and BPO industry to help the youth in the country to enlighten themselves with the need of the sector.

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