IT enabled services offer vast job opportunities

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, NOV. 24. The Government feels that the industry's long-term forecasts regarding exports of IT services and software are broadly on track and that call centres will account for a sizable proportion of the earnings from this sector. ``Exports of IT services and software from India are likely to touch $50 billion by 2008. Out of this, IT enabled services including call centres would account for $15 billion,'' said the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr. Omar Abdullah, during a visit to a call centre facility being run by a private company organised by the Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC).

Call centres will be a vital component in India's attempt to increase exports in the coming years. Call centres belong to the genre of IT enabled services that are increasingly being off- sourced to India by multinational companies, particularly in the U.S., to ensure 24-hour customer service. The team at the India- based call centres generally provides round the clock customer services at much lower costs as compared to North America and some European countries.

Mr. Abdullah felt the spread of IT-enabled services could create at least one million jobs in `second tier' cities across the country. ``The uptake of IT-enabled services means generating huge employment as the sector is expected to absorb one million persons, largely in smaller and rural towns.'' Such a proposition seemed ideal for a State like Jammu & Kashmir which had a severely under-utilised software technology park, he said.

Mr. Abdullah also concurred with the industry's perception that a large portion of India's IT-enabled exports would come from call centres and similar services such as medical transcription, data entry, web development, multimedia and digitalisation. In a number of these areas, a U.S. based project team does the day shift and at the end of the day, the project is passed on to a parallel team working in India overnight. This 24-hour production run leads to productivity gains.

The Minister said the call centre segment could be worth $10 billion but India had a long way to go. The U.S. had about 37,000 call centres whereas India had only a handful of such centres. Mr. Abdullah alluded to a forthcoming international exposition being supported by the union ministries of commerce and information technology which will highlight the competitive advantages of locating call centres in the country.

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Section  : Business
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