In a move that could benefit
mid-sized BPOs, the Department of Telecom has
allowed firms, with more than 50 seats, to use
their infrastructure during the day, to service
local clients. So far, they were only allowed
to handle outsourcing for international clients
during the night, while the infrastructure would
lie vacant during the day.
Insiders hailed the move, as
the regulation was a deterrent for domestic companies,
to outsource their operations to a local firm.
By allowing higher utilisation of the same infrastructure,
the amendment is expected to predominantly benefit
small call centers, which comprise approximately
20% of Indian BPO industry.
The domestic telecom and banking
sectors, which were the first to adopt and move
to outsourcing, would be the happiest with this
move as they are already burdened with rising
costs and a greater emphasis on customer relationship
management.
Our Say |
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| Bharti
Tele-Ventures, Yes Bank, SBI, Pfizer
India and HDFC Bank are some of the
companies that already outsource services
in India. Earlier, it wasn’t
commercially viable for Indian companies
to outsource their services to domestic
call centers since they clearly weren’t
willing to pay the same rates as global
clients.
This
move will propel call centers to aggressively
enter tier-II cities, since they will
need to service Indian clients with
industry estimates expecting the existing
number to more than double in the
next 18 months.
However,
several players have welcomed this
move with caution and skepticism-
especially since they foresee issues
in using the same infrastructure between
their domestic and global clients.
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