New Delhi: India's BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry is on a global shopping spree. After having acquired small to medium businesses from major English-speaking markets, especially Britain and the US, Indian BPO companies are now looking towards non-English speaking markets to tap their potential in these unexplored terrains.

A large number of companies from non-English speaking European countries also are eyeing India for outsourcing their work, leading to a spur in the demand for persons proficient in foreign languages.

"Multi-lingual processes are the natural progression for the successful IT Enabled Services-Business Process Outsourcing (ITES-BPO) players and part of their expansion to new markets. Moreover, as companies go beyond the major English-speaking markets especially in the UK and US, they need to provide native language support in French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian and so on," Kiran Karnik, president of National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), said.

"Even for the US market, some clients are looking for Spanish-language support services. Recognising the potential that exists, there is now a trend within the Indian ITES-BPO industry to address other foreign languages as well," Karnik reiterated, adding that most of the large players will need to expand their offering to include multi-lingual activities, so as to meet the needs of their existing customers.

While presently there is a maximum demand for French and German languages' work in the BPO sector, companies have started acquiring work in Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Czech, Italian, Korean and Indonesian.