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Introduction

In the last five years, the most hotly debated topic in India, and as a matter of fact worldwide, has been the advent and rise of the Indian BPO industry. Many a conference has been organized to discuss on the viability of the industry, its impact on our economy, the risks and challenges that the industry currently faces et al.

BPO certainly is a much loved as well as hated acronym - loved in the countries like India where it has provided jobs to millions, while hated in many developed nations where giant corporations have decided to outsource work. The acronym means Business Process Outsourcing, i.e., outsourcing or sending some non-core work to a separate organization. While India has been considered to be one of the pioneers and champions in this industry, countries like Philippines, China, etc., are providing strong competition.

This article has been written highlighting the risks that the industry is currently facing, and the efforts that should be taken to mitigate the same. But all discussions in the article are from an Indian perspective, and may not be relevant to all other countries that are also in business to capture a bigger share of the global outsourcing pie.

Also, the primary aim of this article is to focus only on the BPO industry. So, related industries like KPO, Research and Analytics (like Market Research, Equity Analysis & Research, Credit Research, etc.) have been kept outside the purview of this study. Some of the BPO organizations have also forayed into fields like analytics, consulting, etc., (e.g., EXL Service has acquired a company named Inductis, thus, strengthening its position in analytics and consulting business).

So, in such cases I have only considered their BPO business for the purview of this study. Even the IT industry (although it involves outsourcing) has been kept outside the scope of this study, as it is an industry in itself with different risks to be addressed.

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* Contributed by: -
Devroop Dhar is a Management Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mumbai. He has almost 5 years of experience in the field of Consultancy, Project Management, Six Sigma. He is an alumnus of IIM Kozhikode, specializing in Finance & Operations. He has also worked with TCS and Bristlecone in the past, and done an internship with EXL Service. He also holds a BE Degree in Production Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
All views expressed in this article are the author's, and not of his employer.