‘India can be global KPO hub’

Having already emerged as the preferred destination for business process outsourcing (BPO), India has now set its sights on becoming a global hub for knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). The country stands to gain from its inherent strengths in the healthcare sector, pharmaceuticals and biotech sector and ICT sector which offer significant growth potential for KPO, a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) paper has said.

According to the paper titled ‘‘India in the New Knowledge Economy,’’ KPO would grow at 46 per cent to reach $17 billion by 2010. India could emerge as a global KPO hub as the business requires specialised knowledge and the country’s large number of engineering and technical institutes are geared to address the manpower demand, the paper said.

As per the paper, the healthcare sector could account for 7-8 per cent of GDP by 2012 and provide direct and indirect employment to around 9 million people. At present, the country spends $22.7 billion on healthcare and the sector is the largest service industry in terms of revenue and the second largest after education in terms of employment.