Houston: Lack of clear strategy and competition from countries like China will see India losing its market share in the BPO business from the current 80 per cent to 55 per cent by 2007, an international research firm has said.

India's share will be whittled by a number of countries, which together will account for a 45 per cent share of the offshore BPO market by 2007, according to a report released by Gartner.

Various countries like Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, Malaysia, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and China have now understood BPO's potential to create jobs and have put together integrated strategies to develop the BPO business, it said.

India will lose business to some of these countries as it does not have a long-term plan for improving infrastructure and increasing the supply of quality employees for the BPO industry, said Sujoy Chohan, vice-president and research director for offshore BPO at Gartner.

The global offshore BPO market was likely to be around $27 billion by 2007. India earned about $2.3 billion last year from offshoring, according to Gartner.

The BPO business requires English-speaking employees with a basic education - available in abundance in most countries, said Mr Chohan. China is also likely to cut into India's share of the BPO market when its BPO business goes on stream in about three to five years, he said. In contrast to countries with well-defined roadmaps for developing BPO, India does not have a clear strategy, Mr Chohan claimed.

"India's poor infrastructure adds to the cost of doing business there," he said, adding in India BPO companies require a lot of redundancies such as backup facilities for power and telecommunications services.

India also does not have a formal long-term plan for creating a quality BPO work force.

"In just three years of BPO (in India) there is already a huge staff attrition problem," Mr Chohan said. Most English-speaking graduates in India have to betrained before they can be employed by BPO companies.