Nod for Nasscom proposals on call centres

New Delhi: Nasscom, the apex industry association for software and service companies in India, has announced that the ministry of communication and information technology, has accepted its recommendations on removing certain procedural bottlenecks that were hampering the growth of the Indian call centre industry.

Nasscom, after consultation with the top 50 ITES players in India, had submitted a list of recommendations on various licensing and connectivity issues to the department of telecommunications (DoT) on 11 April 2002.

Says Nasscom president Kiran Karnik: We are pleased that the government has been very prompt and receptive in accepting almost all our recommendations. In order to maintain a steady growth and lead against other emerging countries in the call centre market, there was a need to simplify licensing norms and encourage investments from global players. These policy amendments will help reduce paper work and streamline operations for the call centre industry.

Nasscom, he says, had identified ITES as an opportunity for the growth of the Indian IT sector a long time back. Since then we have been pushing the government for policies that will promote this sector and have consistently been organising industry forums such as the ITES seminar in Chennai last year, to give direction to the industry. This has lead to a healthy 70-per cent growth in the sector and going forward, we expect this segment to be the growth engine for the IT sector.

Further, he says, this sector has been a major employment generator, and the acceptance of Nasscoms recommendations should provide growth opportunities, leading to larger employment potential.

Nasscoms recommendations accepted by the ministry of communication and information technology include:

• Sharing of bandwidth for disaster recovery and mission-critical applications between multiple entities and redundancy by call centres in order to build confidence among its overseas customers has been allowed, provided they operate as independent companies, entities or consortiums.
•   Call centre approval will now not be customer-specific, provided the call centre will update DoT on a periodic basis on the details of customers added.
• Sharing of bandwidth between multiple locations of a single entity and also within the same group of companies will now be permitted.
• To ensure ease of operations, Internet and IPLC connectivity on the same LAN has been permitted provided the call centre ensures that there is no diversion of voice or data traffic to third parties.

Recognising the potential of the ITES sector for India, Nasscom has been working intensely at promoting this sector among all parties involved, including the industry, the government and potential customers. Nasscom has formed a core ITES task force to look into the issues facing the industry and the possible initiatives that will further foster growth in the sector.

Besides, Nasscom has also been holding an annual ITES event and has been promoting India as an ITES destination both at Indian and international forums. Also, Nasscom, in association with McKinsey, will soon be releasing a comprehensive study on the opportunities in the ITES sector in India.

The ITES industry offers a unique opportunity for the Indian economy, in terms of foreign direct investment, employment and revenue generation. The IT-enabled services industry in India, particularly call centres and the back-office segment, has been growing at over 70 per cent, employing over 1 lakh people, and generates revenues of Rs 7,100 crore.