Pilot BPO centre ready for village

California state's legal papers formatted in a tiny farming hamlet near Bangalore! After encapsulating the metros and dabbling with the tier II cities, the BPO wave looks set to hit Indian villages.

Taking the lead is global IT major HP with pilot plans to move 50 to 100 seats to its i-community in Kuppam near the Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka border.

Anand Tawkar, director, Emerging Market Solutions said, "HP is looking to move a part of its low-end BPO work like data entry, formatting, paper turning and scanning from Bangalore to Kuppam. The pilot project, scheduled to begin before the year is out, will be in the threshold of 50 to 100 seats."

However, the size of the ITES centre can be much bigger, as participation of other ITES firms looks like a possibility.

For instance, the Delhi-based Datamation, which is currently testing out the prowess of the villagers by outsourcing four seats for its data entry work, has indicated its intention to scale it up.

HP officials expect this arrangement to offer a further 20 to 25 seats in the next three months.

Officials said, the trial project in Kuppam had revealed that the right level of skill sets for such low-end operations existed and the growth of such ITES firms in villages will arrest the migration of educated youth to cities in search of similar work.

They added, the training centre under the the i-community banner is already gearing up to train locals on computer based education in a bid to create a talent pool for the proposed ITES facility.

An HP and Andhra Pradesh government collaboration, the Kuppam i-community seeks to build IT capabilities within the community and establish a sustainable economic model.

While it serves as a rural product and solutions testing hub for HP, the community benefits through programmes like the ITES centre, citizen-government interface through the Internet and the farming information system.