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Gujarat mulls BPO venture fund
SIDDHARTH J BAAD / ahmedabad
Indian BPO exports reached a level of Rs 11,700 crore in 2002-03 from Rs 2,400
crore in 1999-00. And now business process outsourcing (BPO) has emerged as
an important element in Gujarat’s information technology policy. Sources
at the IT commissionerate said that the state government was considering setting
up a separate venture fund for BPO companies in addition to its existing Rs
24 crore “Gujarat IT Venture Fund.”
Furthermore, in a bid to woo investors into this sector, the state government
has announced a slew of incentives. These include provisions for a special incentive
of Rs 25 lakh to 1 crore for projects with large capital investments. Besides,
labour laws have already been amended to suit the IT industry with IT industrial
units getting incentives on 64 Kbps data lines. This has resulted in Gujarat
attracting a number of high value projects in the IT sector.
At present, nearly 50 companies are engaged in the BPO sector in the state.
N D Panchal, senior manager - services and company secretary, Gujarat Informatics,
a nodal agency for IT of the state government, said, “The IT sector accounts
for 16 percent of total industrial enterpreneurship memorandum (IEM) filed in
Gujarat and accounts for 6.2 per cent of foreign direct investments (FDI) approved.”
He added, “Big IT companies like Infosys have shown interest in investing
in the BPO sector in the state and we are hopeful that the coming years will
see a boom in this sector.” According to Panchal, Infosys has already
announced its intention of setting up a development centre in Gujarat that will
boost the IT sector. The project is at the planning stage and the company is
working on the exact amount of investment to make in the state-of-the-art development
centre. “Cities like Bangalore (Karnataka) and Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh)
have seen enormous development in the IT sector and Gujarat has started creating
a positive environment which will play a vital role in attracting investments,”
he added.
He further said that the strategy for BPO sector development revolves around
five crucial areas. These are: creation of infrastructure, creation of a talent
pool, clusterisation, creation of ambience to improve quality of life and networking
society.
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