Hello, Bidar calling

Under state's new rural BPO scheme, tier-two cities get ready to give India's IT hub a run for its money

Hello, Bidar calling

Under state's new rural BPO scheme, tier-two cities get ready to give India's IT hub a run for its money

Move over Bangalore, it's Bidar calling. The state government's recent rural BPO plan is all set to make IT hubs of the tier-two cities.

BPOs are ready to invest nearly Rs 6,000 crore at the district and taluka levels in Karnataka to reduce expenditure and acquire cheap resources as they stagger out of recession.

Sadly, Bangalore stands to lose its distinction of the most number of BPOs in India 2085 of them till date.

Ashok Kumar Mannoli, state Principal Secretary IT and BT said, "Now there is no difference between Bidar and Bangalore. The IT industry has understood the potential in rural areas and they want to set up an indigenous business that is otherwise tough to negotiate in metropolitan cities like Bangalore."

In fiscal 2009-10, the state government has earmarked Rs 15 crore for the R-BPO scheme. This year, already 25 of the companies and entrepreneurs who had shown interest have received approvals to start BPOs. The smaller cities are increasing their seating capacities.

The freshers

The first government-promoted rural BPOs recently started operations in Srirangapatnam near Mysore, Salgame (Hassan), Shiggaon (Haveri) and Gundlupet (Chamrajnagar).

Nikhil Francis, an IT tech support executive at Dell Computers predicted that now IT and BPO centres will change a lot more. "Companies are now recruiting job-specific experts to tackle any problem. The conditions are very different from what they were two years ago. They are taking every measure to handle the worst recession like situations," he said.

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