Hunting partners for establishing BPOs

Taking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream a step closer to reality, the government has given its approval to setting up BPOs in Northeast states. Now, the Software Technology Park of India (STPI), which is implementing authority of the program, is planning to float a request for proposals to identify private partners for centers.

The government is planning to set up BPOs, with a total of 5,000 seats, in Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. The government has set aside a budget of Rs 50 crore for the project, which would be set up under private-public partnership. The onus is now on STPI to identify the partner agencies which will actually run those call centers and BPO operations, based on a competitive bidding.

The government estimates show that North-East has a talent pool for BPOs, not just for servicing the domestic clients but also global ones, hence creation of jobs in the North-East, especially in the BPO sector should be realized soon. With availability of skill-sets in the Northeast, requirement of adequate trainers is the only gap in the establishment of BPOs.

In the past also, the government has initiated steps to enhance IT skills in the region. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) had started this initiative to develop IT skills in the region with the help of National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology.

The BPO (also known as the business process management or BPM industry) today employs over a million people. In FY14, the industry reported exports of $20 bn, a growth of 11.4% over the previous year. The figure is expected to rise, going forward, with most industry players re-focusing on the domestic Indian market.