Now, Global Majors Lend Their Voice To Indian BPO Players
The Financial Express,  November 1, 2002

New Delhi:  In a show of confidence by customers, there is a marked rise in voice-based services outsourcing from Europe and the US to the Indian call centre industry.

The voice component within BPO has increased from 25 per cent to 75 per cent and is expected to rise further in the coming years, according to National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). Web-based contact centre activities in the country have drastically fallen from 75 per cent to 35 per cent over the last three years.

“Earlier, companies were not willing to risk outsourcing their non-Web BPO requirements to India. But the successful performance by the industry has given US and European companies confidence to increase voice-enabled BPO outsourcing activities to India,” Nasscom vice-president Sunil Mehta said.

According to various estimates, large BPO players (with over 500 seats) currently have 70 per cent of their total processes on voice.

Some of the large BPO companies like Talisma, Daksh, Transworks, EXL Service and Epicenter, initially started with Web activities and have now gradually moved on to voice-based services.

“In US, the BPO industry moved from voice to Web and in India just the reverse is happening. Earlier, BPO companies were doing zero per cent of voice and now they are doing up to 50 per cent of voice business,” QAI BPO-head Umesh Vyas said.

According to QAI, 30 to 40 per cent of the total BPO activities are in the back-end space, 40-50 per cent are voice-based and the rest are Web-based. About a year ago, voice was only 15 per cent of total BPO activities, email contributed 40 per cent while business process outsourcing ((BPO) contributed the rest. “The confidence in the Indian BPO industry seems to be rising and apart from the US and UK, other countries are also looking at India,” Mr Vyas said.

Mumbai-based and ChrysCapital funded Transworks started as a 100 per cent Web-based call centre in 2000 but now 80 per cent of its operations are on voice.

“Voice (in India) is increasing at a rate faster than Web as maximum margins are in voice and not in Web, even though Web is a cost effective medium for companies,” Transworks founder Jagdish Moorjani said.

Transworks is running a 400-seater contact centre and has recently launched another facility of the same size.

It has been the same experience for the Bangalore-based Talisma Outsource Service. In 2000, Talisma started as a pure Web-and-chat focused BPO player but moved on to voice. As a result, 35 per cent of its BPO activities are based on voice, according Talisma Outsource Service operations manager Mohit Mittal.

“Web has really not grown as much as was thought earlier, although Web-based BPO activities are more cost-effective and easier to do. But India has managed to establish itself in the BPO voice segment and now the clients are more comfortable with voice,” EXL Service chief marketing officer Krishan Dhawan said.

In the case of EXL Service, 90 per cent of the activities are voice and the rest (10 per cent) are based on Web.

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