Nasscom today named the top 15 third-party ITES providers in the country. The survey, however, did not consider captive units. Otherwise, GECIS, which was a captive till end of 2004, would have been the largest player. Last year, General Atlantic Partners (GAP) and Oak Hill Partners each took a 30% stake in GECIS, with GE retaining the balance 40%.
The revenue gap between WNS and Wipro BPO is not much. WNSs revenue last fiscal was $165 million compared to Wipros $148 million. Going by the run rate reported in the last three quarters of 2004-05, HCL BPO is likely to cross the $100-million mark.
Daksh, which was taken over by IBM last year, is ranked fourth, a notch down compared to last year.
In the 10th spot is Progeon, the BPO subsidiary of Infosys. Mphasis BPO, formerly Msource, is in the sixth spot, behind EXL services. Included in the top 10 are Intelenet Global (7), ICICI OneSource (8), and GTL (9).
Nasscom officials said some companies did not provide their India revenues as reported to STPI. Had they done so, they would have been among the top 10. Examples being e-funds and Sutherland Technologies. Also, companies like vCustomer and Zenta Group have chosen not to reveal their revenues for reasons like recent buyout or ‘quiet period’.
“The Nasscom rankings have become an industry benchmark and reinforce the formers initiative in encouraging Indian IT industry to adopt global best practices. These rankings are now used by customers globally,” said Mr Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom.
The highlights of the Nasscom study include the huge growth in employee base and number of companies. As in end fiscal 2005, around 3.48 lakh people were employed in this business while the number of companies grew to 410 from 285 in the previous fiscal.
Captive units (65%) continue to dominate the landscape. The estimated value of work outsourced (by domestic clients) was $600 million, double of the $300 million outsourced in the previous fiscal. BPO offshored to India in 04-05 was $165 million, up 120% from $75 million last fiscal. Finance and accounting and human resource BPOs are the fast-growing areas.
The report also points out to ITES-BPO firms gaining significant traction in transaction processing, and Indian vendors becoming capable of multi-location delivery by expanding to locations like China, Eastern Europe, Ireland and Philippines and also within the country.
Last fiscal also saw significant merger and acquisition activity in the sector such as the GECIS-Oak, Daksh-IBM and e-serve-Citigroup deals.