Infrastructure concerns dominate Nasscom meet

Nasscom India ITES-BPO Strategy Summit 2004

Even as the Indian ITES (IT enabled services) and BPO (business process outsourcing) companies continue to be a critical component of many a company's supply chain process, concerns on infrastructure dominated the Nasscom's India ITeS-BPO Strategy Summit 2004.

Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys Technologies, Kiran Karnik president, Nasscom and Arun Seth, managing director, British Telecom (Worldwide) Ltd voiced their concerns on the infrastructure while inaugurating the signature Nasscom event in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Over 500 delegates, including the VC community, customers as well as major companies, attended the event.

"The industry can take care of itself if the government can provide world-class infrastructure," Karnik said in his inaugural address.

Stating that concerns on cyber security, intellectual property and data protection will be addressed during the course of the two-day summit, Karnik said, "From an HR and cost perspective, it is also important to focus on new locations that are emerging apart from major BPO clusters like Bangalore and Gurgaon."

According to Nilekani, ITES-BPO industry continues to be shining star of the Indian IT story. "This industry has grown from $ 2.5 billion to $ 3.6 billion. The target for this year is $ 5.1 billion. Last year, this industry alone provided nearly 70,000 jobs. It is important that organisations must have the operational excellence to continuously provide opportunities. However, the government must take steps to increase its focus on providing better infrastructure. While the industry can take care of itself, good infrastructure will play a key role in attracting better talent as well as the customer base."

"Since customers' dependability on the industry continues to increase, quality infrastructure is imperative in order to live up to their expectations," he added.

Expressing satisfaction on the emergence of new cities and towns that have become "engines of job creation," Arun Seth added that increasing supply of manpower was the only solution to mitigate the problems of this industry.

"Higher attrition and wage pressures is a concern as it will affect the competitiveness of the industry. Reducing telecom costs will alleviate cost pressure to a great extent. We must not be complacent with our progress as many countries are offering similar services at one-thirds of our cost," Seth said.

In conclusion, Seth added that Nasscom is continuously working with the government on how best to adhere to the various laws on data privacy.