The Hindu : National : Jaipur one of the “best” locations for IT, BPO

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Jaipur one of the “best” locations for IT, BPO

Special Correspondent

JAIPUR: The Pink City has emerged as one of the “challenger” locations for the Indian IT and BPO industries with a recent study by NASSCOM and A. T. Kearney putting it among the 15 most suitable destinations for development of the sector.

The “challenger” category is considered the “best” locations after the top seven—Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, National Capital Region and Pune—for the Indian industry, which does business worth 64 billion US dollars now.

The NASSCOM-A.T.Kearney study, promoted by the stalwarts of the IT-BPO industry with the objective of achieving uniform economic development, notes that tremendous opportunities await the sector in cities such as Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Indore and Jaipur at a time when the existing seven locations, ranked as “leaders”, are bursting at seams.

The other locations with “challenger” potential are Lucknow, Kochi, Madurai, Mangalore, Nagpur, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirappalli, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam.

The study lists 12 cities, including Aurangabad, Bhopal, Goa, Gwalior and Hubli-Dharwad, in the next, “followers”, category while 13 more are in the “aspirants” list.

“The IT-BPO industry should look beyond the metros,” notes NASSCOM chairman Ganesh Natarajan, who was here recently to address a conclave on developing the city as a premier destination.

“Jaipur can be uniquely positioned as an alternative location for NCR on account of its proximity to Delhi. The availability of good analytical skills make Jaipur an attractive destination for non-voice related services and processes,” he points out.

Dr. Natarajan thinks the abundant Hindi-speaking skills the State has could be leveraged fruitfully for domestic BPO voice operations. “Jaipur is like what Pune was in 2001 when it started with three IT companies. Now two lakh people are employed in IT-BPO in Pune and its annual exports amount to two billion US dollars,” he observes.

The obvious advantages for Jaipur are its high ranking in political stability, government support, law and order scenario and social infrastructure index.

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