'Infrastructure in secondary cities a bottleneck'

Infosys BPO Chairman T V Mohandas Pai on Tuesday said BPO firms cannot venture into secondary and tertiary cities in the country unless state governments create adequate facilities in terms of infrastructure, communication and transportation.

"All governments want BPOs in secondary and tertiary cities. Where is the infrastructure? Firms cannot scale up in the absence of government support in creating basic facilities," he told reporters after Infosys BPO signed an MoU with Karnatak University to improve the employment opportunities of the students by training them.

Recalling Infosys BPO's experience in Mangalore where it is running a 500-seater operation, Pai pointed out that the firm did not get power supply for the first seven months: "We had to deploy generators for our operations. The experience was not encouraging. Only recently have we been given land in Mangalore for a campus. But the transport link between Mangalore and Bangalore is inadequate. The frequency of flights has to increase since travelling by road consumes a lot of time."

He said Infosys BPO is keen on tapping the talent in secondary and tertiary cities. "We have started operations in Bhubaneshwar and Thiruvananthapuram. Capacity addition is possible only when the infrastructure improves," he added.