Chennai: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market in India is all set for a robust growth in the next five years with a potential to capture at least 30 to 40 per cent share of the emerging $ 550 to $ 700 billion global BPO market, according to experts at a National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) seminar on outsourcing on January 21.

Outsourcing as a percentage of global companies' budgets was estimated to grow from 30 per cent in 2002 to 40 per cent in 2004 in the case of all industries and as much as 50 per cent in the case of large Information Technology (IT) companies, Michael F Corbett, a leading international consultant on IT outsourcing and BPO said.

Speaking at the seminar he said that outsourcing was one of the greatest organisational and industry structure shifts of the Century adding that government outsourcing (privatisation) itself grew by 65 per cent during 1996-2001 to touch $ 400 billion in the US alone.

"However government outsourcing remains a good 10 years behind private sector outsourcing across the globe," he said.

According to Nigel Roxbough, another noted international consultant on outsourcing in his presentation said that IT infrastructure and business process outsourcings typically cut costs by 12 per cent and off shore outsourcings offer 40 to 50 per cent cost reductions.

Nigel Roxbough in his presentation said that IT services exports from India was estimated to touch $ 28 to 30 billion by 2008 and IT Enabled Services (ITES) $ 21 to 24 billion indicating that the Indian outsourcing market is all set for an excellent growth.

He said that ways of climbing up in the emerging BPO market included getting "into the picture" through partnering, gaining influencer role in deal making to fast forward offshore component, striving for quality hallmarks in ERP customisation and developing fully integrated customer service capabilities.

"The strategic options open to major Indian BPO players includes strategic acquisitions despite the fact that this option was expensive due to geographically fragmented market," he said.

He pointed out that the leading Indian BPO players like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was earning $ 900 million per annum by offering offshore outsourcing through direct/subsidiaries/joint ventures/alliances while WIPRO earned $ 700 million and $ Infosys 500 million.

Michael Corbett said that what was demanded from aspiring Indian BPO players was excellence in every facet of operations as the market was highly competitive at every level and re-defining itself every day.

PTI