Centre’s ‘Digital India’ programme aims at promoting BPO-ITeS industry in North East

To incentivise setting up of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and ITes (IT enabled services) in North-eastern region under the Centre’s flagship ‘Digital India’ programme, the Union government has come up with a North East BPO Promotion Scheme (NEBPS) with a dream to make the region a back-office hub.

The scheme primarily aims at employment generation through BPO and ITes operations and “balanced growth” of IT and ITes sectors in the region, said Rajiv Kumar, joint secretary, department of electronics and information technology, Government of India.

With a robust pool of English speaking population, North-eastern region scores predominantly in providing skilled manpower, both in communication and soft skills, for the BPO industry countrywide. However, various efforts in past to attract BPO industry to set up shop in the region failed miserably. Evoking no interest from the industry to venture into the region, the Centre has been of late tweaking its policies to make the region attractive.

The NEBPS, with an outlay of Rs 50 crore, provides capital support of up to 50% of expenditure incurred on admissible items with a cap of Rs 1 lakh per seat, or whichever is lower. There are also special incentives for promoting local entrepreneur, women employment, performance and training support, said Kumar. The nodal agency for implementation of the scheme would be Software Technology Park of India (STPI), Guwahati.

Kumar said there would also be training incentive of up to 50% of training expenditure with a cap of Rs 6,000 per employee. He said a NEBPS Management Committee (NMC) has been constituted for monitoring and reviewing the scheme on a regular basis.

About 85% of IT revenues are presently generated by the leader cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai.

A Nasscom-Kushman and Wakefield Report of 2014 had recommended the Centre to come up with a “dedicated policy aimed at further growth of the industry with adequate support from the state government” for emerging locations.

IKF Technologies, Serco BPO, Anjaybee Infotech and SS NetCom Pvt Ltd are few of the BPO firms currently operating in the region on smaller scales. There are five STPI centres in operation in the region which provide subsides rental spaces for BPO/ITes firms. A 2008 NASSCOM-AT Kearney Report found Guwahati and Gangtok as “aspiring” cities and Agartala, Shillong, Aizawl as “potential” locations for BPO and ITes industry.

As per government figures, BPO industry has been registering an 8% year-on-year domestic growth and the country has more than 3,500 firms. With Indian BPO companies serving more than 78 countries worldwide, the year-on-year export growth of BPO industry has been 11%.