Time was when everybody and anybody cashed in on the BPO euphoria and set up call centres in India. That was in 2001-02. Circa 2007 and many of them have disappeared or are languishing. The wall seems to have got higher now for anybody thinking of entering into the BPO sector as costs and domain expertise are a big entry barrier.

The Indian BPO sector, excluding that of KPO, has by and large not seen any third-party service provider entering into this segment in the recent past and if there are any, it is the existing players expanding or opening captive centres.

According to market estimates, there are around 700 ITeS companies in India and only 400 of them are serious players. Today, it costs anywhere between $10,000-25 ,000 per seat and one needs about 1,000 seats for running a viable voice-based operation. Avinash Vashistha, CEO of advisory firm Tholons, says that unlike IT outsourcing, BPO is a capital-intensive segment as one needs to make heavy investment in setting up the infrastructure and hiring people.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.