Three phases in the Indian ITES industry.

There are three distinct phases in the Indian ITES industry.

The first phase had those players that started captive units, such as GE and Citigroup in the mid-1990s. This phase lasted for three-four years when the idea of third party was born and we saw the advent of the Spectramind, CustomerAssets and Msources of the world. We also saw VC-funded companies and niche companies entering the BPO space and, of course, there were the big daddies of IT such as TCS, Infosys and Satyam, who started Intelenet, Progeon and Nipuna, respectively, around the same time.

In the third phase, we are seeing these third-party players moving back to a captive set-up ... look at Eserve, Intelenet. We also are seeing global banks, automobile majors and insurance companies setting up their captive shops here in India, such as ABN AMRO, HSBC, General Motors, Aviva, etc.

The BPO industry has evolved though these various stages but now as these BPO players move up the value chain and execute more specialised functions, we will see the transformation from BPO to KPO (business process outsourcing to knowledge process outsourcing).

Both the industries are complementary to each other. In fact, many BPOs are repositioning themselves as KPO units. Only time will tell how much the media projects KPO as the next big thing.