The IT-BPO sector in India is only about 20 years old. Despite that strong fact, the industry is seen yielding phenomenal growth for itself at the reckoning of over $50 billion. This makes it an abundantly significant industry in India and the World. However significant, there are many myths lurking behind the great growth.
Let us crack the biggest myths of the IT-BPO industry in India:
- The IT-BPO industry in India is able to sustain its growth over the fact that the difference between the average salary of US IT worker and that of Indian will go away. This fact is supported by increasing salary of the IT-BPO sector in India. However, this is not the fact. For it was noticed that in 2009, the average American IT worker's annual income was $77,200, while on the contrary it was $ 12,100 for an Indian IT worker. Now, despite that the US economy is facing depression and still the annual income of the US worker will if not stagnate, will keep on rising as the labor market is dependent on the factors of demand and supply of the IT personnel. Since, this is a huge gap, and since the value of Rupee is getting to devalue in front of the US dollars, it would take a lot of time for India to be at par in terms of wages with US.
- The second myth underlying the IT-BPO industry is that the China and Philippines are going to overtake India as new, rising, attractive hubs of BPO services. This is no false a statement in entirety. For we all know that in the recent past days, Philippines have done remarkably well voice based BPO services and have thereby registered a growth for themselves at the tune of $7.2 billion, making it 4.5% of the country's GDP, whereas Indian IT-BPO sector contributed at the tune of 3.7% to its GDP. However, what needs to be remembered is that Philippines is much a smaller country then India's some of the states itself, making it grim to have the kind of expertise and scale of operations that India has and can have in future. Considering China, which has humungous resources and the ability to grow but still clients feel skeptic about their IP protection in China.
- The Indian IT companies do not make licensed software products. They hire work from other countries. Even if there are some IT companies which are into making software products it is still known that the revenues derived from those are too less. This doesn't mean that the Indian IT-BPO companies can grow only by generating and retaining its clients' IPs but can also try its prospects where retained code drives into such platforms which shall allow these service providers to carve a distinct identity of its own in the Indian BPO market.
