Offshore contact centers in India going places

Despite some early skepticism by cynics, the outsourced contact centers in
India serving the offshore clientele are going places. Quite literally. Today,
the offshore contact centers are going beyond Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore to
cities like Ahmedabad, Pune, Huyderabad, Chennai., Kolkata, Guwahati and even
Belgaum.

According to data available with VOICE&DATA as on 30 September 2001,
India has about 75 offshore contact centers, in operational or advanced planning
stage. This excludes the captive centers like that of GE, eBookers, British
Airways, and Amex but includes the contact centers set up by US third party call
center companies like Convergys and Sitel. 

Of the 75 centers, North has the lion’s share of 30, while West trying to
catch up with a total base of 25. While the south accounts for 18, the rest two
are in the East. City-wise, National Capital Region (NCR) comprising Delhi,
Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad, accounts for 28, while Chandigarh has two. In the
West, Mumbai has 21, Ahmedabad three and Pune has one. In South, Bangalore leads
with 12, Hyderabad has three, Chennai has two, and one is coming up in Belgaum.

In India, as analyzed by VOICE&DATA earlier, there are primarily three
types of companies who have entered the business–the corporates, led by the
old economy majors like the Tatas, Jindals, Ansals, Dalmias, Munjals (Hero),
Adani, Flex, and Phoenix; the professionals funded by the VCs; and the small and
medium businesses with strong local presence. Bangalore has the maximum number
of VC-backed companies with professional management, while Mumbai is split
between professionals and the corporate backed ones. The capital has a mix of
all the three. Other places are primarily dominated by small and medium
enterprise backed companies.

VOICE&DATA is the only magazine that has been analyzing this segment from
June 1999, right from the time the activities began in this sector. More
information is available at https://www.voicendata.com/content/convergence/call_centers/,