Being a customer of an Indian IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services provider, you must be aware of the most popular outsourcing city in the country. But do you know what’s beyond Bangalore? There are 43 potential outsourcing locations, which are ready to become the next hot spots.

A recently released study conducted by India’s software and services companies’ association, Nasscom, and A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm, revealed the names of these 50 leading and prospective Indian outsourcing cities along with advantages and shortcomings of these locations. In fact, these smaller cities are capable of creating two to three million IT and BPO jobs by 2018, if the industry takes effective measures for their growth.

The study titled Location Roadmap For IT & BPO Growth: Assessment Of 50 Leading Cities, named the challenger cities — Ahmedabad, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Indore, Jaipur, Kochi, Lucknow, Madurai, Mangalore, Nagpur, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirapalli, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam.

What’s working for these challenger cities is the severely increasing pressure on the leading Indian outsourcing cities — such as Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, NCR and Pune — due to the surging demand of IT and BPO services. It is also putting a lot of pressure on infrastructure and costs. This trend is, therefore, encouraging the sourcing community to look beyond these locations. Hence, the sourcing industry is noticing immense potential in the next set of 43 locations. However, the top seven locations will continue to register significant growth.

“The Indian IT and BPO sector has been a frontrunner of economic development in the selected cities, providing employment to a large number of people and improving the overall quality of life and amenities like education and healthcare in these cities,” says Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, Nasscom and Global CEO, Zensar Technologies. “We now see the time as being right to spread this development to a new set of locations, provided the requirements of the Industry can be met. We have broken down these 50 locations into different categories and for each of these locations, and even beyond them, there is significant potential to create a success story. We see this report serving as a planning input for State Governments, educational institutes, policy makers and local industry bodies when they look at means to attract investment into their regions.”

The study also reveals that “from a talent perspective, while the number of people required to capture a five-fold growth are available, there maybe a requirement of employable talent, of which approximately 50 percent of the additional talent requirements will have to be met from tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India, necessitating the creation of physical and social infrastructure in these cities.”

The findings of the study are based on the analysis of data collected from 50 locations on over 100 metrics broken down in to key parameters such as knowledge pool and skill-set availability, infrastructure, social and living environment, enabling business environment, government support and operating cost. Apart from secondary research, a key aspect of the study was significant primary interactions with companies, educational institutions, government authorities, etc. in each of the 50 locations.

Leaders	Challengers	Followers	Aspirants
Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad Kolkata Mumbai NCR Pune	Ahmedabad Bhubaneshwar Chandigarh Coimbatore Indore Jaipur Kochi Lucknow Madurai Mangalore Nagpur Thiruvananthapuram Tiruchirapalli Vadodara Visakhapatnam	Aurangabad Bhopal Goa Gwalior Hubli-Dharwad Kanpur Mysore Nashik Pondicherry Salem Surat Vijayawada	Allahabad Dehradun Durgapur Gangtok Guwahati Ludhiana Patna Raipur Ranchi Shimla Siliguri Srinagar Varanasi

Source: Nasscom/A.T.Kearney