Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
News >> Technology >>
India set to become the new KPO hub: CII
By agencies
|
Monday, 09 May 2005, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: India is all set to emerge as a Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) destination, with a Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) study saying that KPO will grow at 46 percent to become a $17 billion sector by 2010.
The paper revealed the growth of services sector would be 8 percent and its contribution to India's GDP would be 51 percent.
According to the CII paper ''India In The New Knowledge Economy'', areas with significant potential for KPO include pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and ICT, besides legal support, intellectual property research and design and development for automotive and aerospace industries.
India stands to gain from its inherent strengths in the healthcare sector, pharmaceutical and biotech sector and ICT sector, it adds.
According to the paper, India could emerge as a global KPO hub as the business requires specialized knowledge in respective verticals and the country's large numbers of engineering and technical institutes are geared to address the manpower demand.
The paper states that by 2012, the healthcare sector could account for 7 percent - 8 percent of GDP and provide direct and indirect employment to around 9 million people.
India spends $22.7 billion on healthcare and the sector is the largest service industry in terms of revenue and the second largest after education in terms of employment.
Asserting that India could be an emerging healthcare hub, the CII paper states, ''India has the opportunity to provide the best of the western and eastern healthcare systems.'' With Indian systems of medicine ''staging a comeback,'' doctors in the West are increasingly prescribing Indian systems of medicine.
Moreover, India has a proven healthcare system with over 60,000 cardiac surgeries done per year that matches international standards.
Multi-organ transplants like renal, liver, heart, bone marrow transplants are successfully performed at one-tenth the cost, and patients from over 55 countries come to India for treatment.
With India possessing cost advantage over many countries, the growth potential of the sector is immense, and also offers huge potential for investments in the sector over the next 10 years.
The CII paper states that the sector would require around $22-31 billion in the next 10 years.
The Indian biotechnology sector too is now on an upswing, and is expected to earn $5 billion annual revenue by 2010. Listing the sector's advantage the paper observes that India offers excellent network of research laboratories, well-developed base industries, rich bio-diversity, extensive clinical trial opportunities and trained manpower and knowledge base, which makes it an automatic base for KPO.
The Indian IT sector too could strike it rich in a new breed of high-end knowledge-based outsourcing as global corporations are moving process like data and intellectual property researches to offshore locations and more specifically to India.
The CII paper adds that India has a balanced portfolio of IT offerings and the sector is moving up the value chain, aligning itself to the latest technology needs.