Bangalore: Prior to joining the BPOs, now one needs not only to master the foreign accent, it's the time to fine tune the regional accent too. The booming domestic market has triggered the BPOs to offer improved service through making its employees sharpen their proficiency on regional languages like Bhojpuri, Marathi, Tamil, Assamese, Bengali. Unlike the previous BPO tradition. "People with a heavy mother tongue influence are preferred," says Gitanjali Dhup Singh, Infosvision marketing VP.

Even the customer care centers in the metros are gripping in talent on regional language through associating with cultural associations and congregations. "We use the opportunity of Sunday congregations of Churches in North Delhi to hire Malayalam talent. Bengali and Assamese speaking candidates can easily be found in places like CR Park in Delhi. While for Telegu and Tamil talent we use temples and cultural associations in Delhi's RK Puram as a recruitment channel. Employee referral is also a good recruitment means," says Omnia BPO business head HS Chadha. To ensure the accent fluency companies like Aegis have also come out with measures like 'Siksha' whereby the customer service employees are trained on different languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil or Kannada.

The domestic BPO market is to reach nearly $1.6 billion (Rs.6,400 crore) against an overall BPO revenue of $11 billion. As per a Everest - Nasscom study, the potential opportunity in the domestic BPO sector is expected to be $15-20 billion by 2012 compared with the $50 billion projected for the overall BPO sector by 2012. This is possible as domestic BPOs need lesser exports and capture the same margins at about 18 percent. The industry is spreading fast into small towns like Surat, Bidar, Pondicherry, Ranchi, Raipur, Patna, Kochi or Hasan, as reported by Economic Times.