India's top 15 BPO-ITeS firms

Genpact has been ranked India's best third party ITES-BPO company, followed by WNS Global Services at the second spot and Transworks Information Services taking the third slot.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the powerful voice of the IT industry in India, on Thursday released the rankings, which are based on the revenues for 2006-07 reported as per the annual Nasscom survey on IT industry performance.

Nasscom said in a media release that this list does not include some companies whose corporate headquarters are located outside India, but have significant India-based delivery capabilities, and have not shared their India-based revenue figures. Had they been ranked based on their India revenues, companies such as Convergys and Sutherland Global Services would have also appeared in this list. Since several companies are privately held, in order to maintain uniformity, revenue figures for the ranked companies are not being shared.

In FY 07, the Indian ITES-BPO segment grew by 33.5% per cent contributing $8.4 billion to the total software and services exports of $31.4 billion.

Speaking about the findings of the survey, Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom, said, "The ITeS-BPO segment continued to grow at a scorching pace, to record export revenues of $8.4 billion in FY07. We expect segment revenues to grow at around 30% next year, to clock exports of $10.5-11 billion in FY08."

"The Indian BPO sector has witnessed significant transformation over the past decade. Starting with basic data entry tasks, it now includes increasingly complex processes. The domestic market has also contributed to the growth of the segment as a whole and we expect on-going momentum considering the large addressable market that it offers. Overseas M&A, along with increase in scale and depth of existing service lines, has complemented the growth of this segment," he added.

Steady growth was observed across the following key service categories:

• Finance & Accounting
• Customer Interaction Services
• Human Resource Administration

Key highlights of the Indian ITES-BPO sector:

• ITES-BPO employee base has grown to 553,000 in FY 07 from 415,000 in FY 06
• There has been strong growth in FAO demand along with steady expansion in emerging service lines (legal, risk mgmt) and overseas M&A complementing the organic growth of this segment.
• The domestic market for ITES-BPO grew to $1.2 billion in FY 2006-07 from $0.9 billion in FY 2005-06, illustrating a significant increase in demand.

In addition to the core categories of CIS, F&A and HR administration, there are several other vertical specific and niche business services being delivered from India. This segment is expected to account for approximately 8-10 percent of the total value of BPO activity undertaken in India.

Examples of these services include the various 'high end' knowledge-based processes such as financial services research support and analysis for equity/debt/derivatives markets; econometrics, data analytics and modeling; business/corporate research/competitive intelligence; legal services, animation and game development services; medical transcription and basic; shared back-office and administrative functions.

Methodology for ranking

Nasscom sends out a detailed questionnaire annually to all its member companies, accounting for 95 percent of the Indian IT software and BPO industry revenue. Information collated through the questionnaire includes: aggregate performance; service lines; verticals and geographies. The survey also takes into account the contribution of the 100 percent owned overseas subsidiaries after deducting all the double accounting.