The call centre and BPO service providers have increased in India over the last 3 years. You find 10 seat centres to 10000 capacity centres.

1.Does this mean there is commoditization?

2.We are witnessing many strategic mergers and acquisitions and outsourcers who had outsourced to third party service providers setting up their own off shore centres instead of outsourcing to third party service providers.Is this a sign of consolidation or a fallout of bad investment decision by fringe players?

3. Have Indian service providers moved up the value chain? What I mean is what is the mix of run of the mill telemarketing campigns and complex core process management?

Any opinions, views, insights are welcome.

Vedula

the problem isnt that it is commoditized, the US is commodotized as agents last on average 4 months and most never come back, the Indian market has the potential for expansion beyond that as India has the technology, size of workforce and training. The other advantage is in Pay. The pay for a good agent is relatively much higher than in other countries. This leads to the potential for the largest call center industry available. however proper management needs to be brought in as well in order to ensure quality and training for the whole industry. The potential is there for truly a great industry and I plan on being on the front lines as this level of change. There is the potential for several million new jobs to be created in the call center and BPO industries but before business development picks up quality of centers need to be expanded. Most of the best center have the capacity for 5-10 times the number of reps then they have seats. Even the ones with campaigns and business arent running at capacity due to the lack of working capital especially in the outbound sector. Real investments need to be made in order to give these centers the captial they need in order to get the training, redundancy, quality and development.