IDC says India's domestic BPO market to touch $6.82 bn

After establishing itself as a major player in the international BPO market, India is now set to shift focus on the domestic market, which is projected to grow at over 30% annually.

According to a report by IT research firm IDC India, the country's domestic BPO market, with nearly 500 players, will grow at a CAGR of 33.3% to touch revenues of $6.82 billion by 2013, up from $1.62 billion in 2008.

The report said the domestic BPO industry would evolve from just running isolated processes for customers to engaging more deeply in identifying and transforming core business processes.

"Positive market indicators of an economic recovery, unbundling of mega outsourcing deals and large unaddressed white spaces such as regional language services support the current optimism," the report said.

Currently, the BFSI vertical contributes the lion's share of 37% to the domestic sector's revenues, while telecom contributes about one-fourth to it.

Other verticals like utilities and services, energy, food and hospitality, aerospace and automotives, consumer durables and government contribute 17%, while the travel segment contributes 8% to the revenue.

Agencies

Why Yahoo! want to chip in for unique ID cards project?

I was raised as a pretty poor farm girl in Wisconsin and always thought of upgrading myself. So I over-achieved! I was lucky...” A characteristically short bio from Carol Ann Bartz, the feisty chief executive of the $7.2 billion internet company Yahoo! and editor of ET’s Emerging Business and IT page today. But there's more to the lady than her reputedly colourful language and distinct management style that has roused the veteran internet company from its supposed stupor.

She battled cancer to take her previous company Autodesk from a mere vertical applications company into a diversified yet focussed $1.4 billion software giant. When she stepped into the top job at Yahoo! this January she had knee surgery. "So, I've decided that I won't start another new job — that knee replacement hurt much more than cancer!” she laughs, but the gritty spirit shows.

Considering she took her time to agree to Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang's repeated pleas to come out of retirement, it was obviously more than glasses of her favourite cheap white wine that made her say yes. The tedium of her golf handicap improving only from 40 to 28 and days filled with gardening, photography and reading were only partly responsible. It was obviously the Autodesk-like challenge of clearing up and focusing while steering the Sunnyvale, California-based company out of a financial slump.

And the first big decision she took reflected it: a decade-long alliance with Microsoft in the search space. “Yahoo currently has a market share of about 20%; Microsoft has about 8% in search. Combined, we will have over 28%,” says Bartz. “But the two will exist as separate brands, maintain their identities. Yet, users will have more data to go after when they search — it’ll make a Yahoo! search deeper and better, and we expect regulatory approvals on the alliance by Q1, 2010.”

An India fan who has been to this country five times before, on her first visit as Yahoo! CEO she is predictably clear about her plans here too. And it has nothing to do with her interest in Mughal history and elephants... She wants in on the government’s Unique Identity Project, and more. She met the PM about it and her friend Nandan Nilekani, stressing Yahoo’s strength. “It involves a huge database and we at Yahoo! have expertise in handling huge amounts of data,” she reveals.

Education and training, what internet can do and how mobile phones can transform the internet experience, are obviously also target areas - and since India is Yahoo's biggest R&D centre after Sunnyvale, more than a supporting role is on the cards. "Entire products are already developed here, not parts of products. Our cloud computing initiative, video search ability and the total search monetization project are being done by Yahoo! in India," she emphasises, seeing Yahoo developing even more tools out of the India centre.

But the main trend this "over-achieving" tech pioneer (she got her computer science degree in 1971) sees is the web getting more collaborative and yet personalised. "It's not just about gathering information but also sharing, and about getting each others opinion," she says as she decides on 'collaborative internet' as the theme for her EBIT page today.

Economic Times

Google enters mobile advertising space with AdMob acquisition

In a push to expand its digital advertising empire to cellphones, Google has agreed to acquire AdMob, a fast-growing mobile advertising start-up, for $750 million in stock, the companies said.

AdMob is one of the top sellers of banner ads on iPhone applications and Web pages that can be retrieved from mobile phones. The acquisition could help establish Google as an early leader in the small but rapidly expanding mobile phone advertising business.

The deal shows that Google is serious about becoming a major player in the mobile advertising ecosystem, said Neil Strother, an analyst with Forrester Research. It puts Google in the front-runner position.Strother and other analysts said that position could prove tenuous. The mobile advertising business, which has long been hailed as the next big thing, remains embryonic.

Agencies

Accenture on a hiring spree in India; To hire 8,000 by 2010

Global technology and consultancy firm, Accenture has said that it is going to add around 8,000 people in India by the end of next year taking its total employee base in the country to 50,000.

"We are 42,000 right now and we imagine we will be about 50,000 by the end of 2010," said Accenture Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, William D Green on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit. Indicating a recovery from the global downturn, Green said the company will continue to focus in India, specially in the areas of analytics, reports a media.

Accenture's focus in India is going to be the analytics space, which will help its clients in converting information into insights for better yields. Green added, "We believe that analytics is going to be an important trend that our customers are going to demand from us. We think India is going to be a great place for us. We have some core centres of excellence in the analytics space in the country."

Accenture, which has annual revenue of $21.58 billion for fiscal 2009, will strengthen its focus on clients in pharmaceutical, telecommunications and energy in the country.

Agencies

By 2010 Indian cos to see 20-30% pick up in hiring

Riding high on a six to seven per cent expected economic growth and with the global economy gradually bouncing back, India Inc is likely to hire 20-30 per cent more talent in CY 10, a top industry official said.

"In 2010 (January-December), I envisage atleast 20-30 per cent increase in recruitments by companies," recruitment consultancy firm, Fun & Joy At Work's Chief Executive Officer, R L Bhatia, told the media here.

This would be over and above the 30 per cent dip in hiring that was witnessed last year, Bhatia said.

Fun & Joy At Work is a nine-year-old recruitment firm with offices across Mumbai and Singapore. The company claims providing talent consultancy to a host of Indian companies across sectors.

BPOs, bio-technology, media, telecom and finance are some of the sectors likely to witnessing higher hirings, Bhatia said.

The Indian economy would clock around six to seven per cent growth and substantial investments into India is in the offing, Bhatia said, adding, "this will trigger an increased hiring."

Bhatia said that despite the the slowdown, companies did hire, though less in number.

"Maybe they hired less, but they hired nevertheless," he said.

His own firm had some 30 companies which have plans to hire around 20,000-30,000 personnel, he said.

"Industry is exercising caution now. As a result, companies are investing only when and where it is necessary. They are sensibly investing in people or human resources," he said.

Agencies