The government’s India BPO promotion scheme, which aims to popularise the industry beyond metros, has so far provided employment to almost 11,000 people across the country, of which 40% are women.
The scheme, under the Digital India Programme, was introduced in April 2016 to incentivise BPO firms to extend operations to tier-2 and tier-3 cities in the country. With an outlay of about ₹500 crore, it aims to incentivise establishment of 48,300 seats, providing about 1.45 lakh jobs, under a three-shift strategy.
“Under the scheme, there are special incentives for employing women and differently-abled persons, and generating employment beyond target,” an official from Ministry of Electronics and IT said. “Till now, out of the reported employment of 10,968 persons under the scheme, approximately 40% are women,” the official added. A Nasscom report had said that more than 34% employees working in the $155-billion IT industry are women. Under the scheme, about 18,160 seats were allocated by the Centre after four rounds of bidding, while close to 14,000 seats have been shortlisted after the fifth round and are likely to be allotted soon.
‘66% of target’
“This will take the total number of seats allocated under the scheme to nearly 32,000, or 66% of the targeted number,” the official said.
The seat allocation has been led by states such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir. The uptake has been on the slower side in Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal and almost Union Territories expect for Chandigarh and Puducherry, the official said.
Under the scheme, 109 units have been approved, through which about 40 firms such as Amazon Development Centre India and AGS Health, will be providing voice and non-voice services in about 16 languages.These will include English, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Marathi, Arabic, Urdu and Spanish.
A total of 61 cities in 21 states and Union Territories have been already covered by the scheme.
