IT biggies give Centre's rural BPO scheme a miss

Bids for just 12,000 seats have been received from 61 firms against the planned 48,300 seats

The government’s plan to promote BPO/ITeS operations in rural areas has drawn a poor response from companies. Bids for only about 12,000 seats have been received from 61 companies against the planned 48,300 seats.

Although about 100 companies participated in the pre-bid conference and expressed interest in the scheme, the final number of bids which the government got was a meager 12,000 with none of the bigger IT companies, barring TCS, showing interest for the scheme.

The Centre had come out with a request for proposal (RFP) in April this year for the scheme and companies were required to submit their bids by June 30. The last date was later extended to July 8 and bids were opened on July 11.

The Centre had approved India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) for promoting of BPO/ITeS operations across the country with an outlay of about Rs 493 crore. As part of the scheme, about 48,300 seats have been planned with distribution across states and UTs based on population percentage as per census 2011 excluding metro cities.  

When Business Standard contacted an official in Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), which is the implementing agency for the scheme, regarding the reason behind lukewarm response, the official said as the companies are not allowed to expand, big companies are not very interested in the scheme.

Also the official said many big companies including HCL and Tech Mahindra have sought further clarifications regarding the scheme and STPI is in contact with them. The official said there could be better response in the next round of bidding.

The official further said they are in talks with the states also regarding the scheme. Initially, there was very good feedback for the scheme, he added. As many as 78 companies have shown interest to set up BPO operations at 190 locations across the country for about 1,25,000 seats. However, it needs to be ascertained what went wrong after the initial response for the scheme.