U.S. unemployment hits BPO the most: Infy
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 07 September 2010, 15:37 IST   |    2 Comments
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U.S. unemployment hits BPO the most: Infy
Bangalore: Growing unemployment rate in the U.S. is threatening to hit BPO services of domestic IT companies the most as American outsourcers cringe from shipping jobs offshore in the face of rising job losses in their country, reports Praveena Sharma from DNA. Indian IT giant Infosys opined that BPO services have been witnessing weakness as U.S. continued to reel under double digit unemployment rates. Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Infosys Technologies said, "Generally, we are seeing our customers spending on all services but there is some weakening (in spending) in BPO segment. Of late, we are not seeing that many BPO projects because of rising job losses (in the U.S.). It is only a conjecture at this point in time." Commenting on his opinion, the other leading IT service providers differed in views. Wipro has been keeping conversations with BPO customers alive by offering higher level skills and quality in voice and non-voice services. Ashutosh Vaidya, Senior Vice-President of Wipro BPO Solution said, "Yes, there is the issue of unemployment in various geographies but I'm not really seeing a decline in the BPO deals. There is enough headroom for us to grow deals in this service segment." The former Nasscom chairman and CEO of Zensar Technologies, said Gopalakrishnan could be talking about weakness in the voice-based BPO services, where there has been a downhill trend for some time now. "If you look at the trend BPO segment then there is growth in platform-based services, transaction-based services are stable and voice-based services are declining. The rising unemployment (in the U.S.) could have quickened the pace of this drop," he said. A recent Gartner report has predicted the Indian BPO revenue to grow to $1.6 billion by 2014 from $521 million in 2009. It said BPO income would touch $683 million this year.

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