Brief

OSPAI to promote Indian Outsourcing Industry

The Other Service Providers Association of India (OSPAI) was formed a couple of months back. It has been registered with the Registrar of Societies. The aim of OSPAI is to promote Indian Outsourcing Industry by way of recommending and assisting in policy changes based on Industry and market needs. OSPAI will closely work with DoT, TRAI, Ministry of Law, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Finance, STPI, SEZ, various Associations and Industry representatives to achieve growth of the Outsourcing Industry. Today, the founder membership has representatives from OSP companies like Accenture, Amex, Avaya, Citibank, Citigroup Global Services, EXL, Fidelity, GE Capital, GE Money, Genpact, HCL Tech, Quattro, Wells Fargo etc. The Office bearers of OSPAI include S.V.Ramana - President (Chief Technology Officer, Genpact), Sanjay Diwan - Vice President (Director, Avaya Global Connect), Sanjay Prasad -Vice President (Chief Information Officer, Citigroup Global Services), PV Ramadas - Treasurer (Vice President Technology - HCL Technologies Ltd.) and NL Verma - Secretary General (Industry Telecom Consultant).

OSPAI is a non-profit and non-governmental society. Its major objectives are:

• Growth of the Indian Outsourcing industry including International and Domestic Call Centers.
• To establish strategic relationship with Government, regulators, policy makers and industry decision makers to help formulate best policies and practices, to promote co-operation and to resolve issues necessary for the growth of the industry.
• Generate interaction / co-ordination / knowledge sharing platforms among all the members
• To create awareness of the emerging and next generation trends in Telecom and IT in access and media like VoIP, VPN & CUG technologies

OSPAI objectives will cover Outsourcing industry, which currently has approximately 2,500 BPO/KPO international and domestic centers operational across India employing about 7 lakh people directly and 20 lakh indirectly, generating a revenue of $11 billion. The Indian outsourcing industry is expected to grow over 25% CAGR to reach $50 billion by 2012, creating direct employment for about 27 lakh people.

OSPAI has been working closely with the Department of Telecommunications for the last couple of months and made significant progress on enabling OSP policy changes, in the areas of introducing the concept of Work from Home, removal of restriction on outgoing PSTN lines for domestic call centers, reduction or waiver of bank guarantees, simplification of documents needed for OSP registration etc. Introduction of Work From Home will enable increase in employable resources i.e. women, physically challenged, part time consultants and people far-away from OSP centers and will also result in lowering of operating costs, help fighting attrition, reducing traffic blues and office space requirements.

The OSPAI members would like to express their sincere thanks to the Department of Telecommunication especially Shri Behura for approving recent OSP policy changes, which will enable Outsourcing industry growth. On request from OSPAI and other Associations, Department of Telecommunications has revised existing Terms and Conditions for OSPs with an aim of giving boost to the Outsourcing Industry. The following are the salient features of the revised terms and conditions:

(i) The concept of agent positions working from Home has been introduced (Work from Home Concept). As a safeguard, submission of a Bank Guarantee of Rs. 5 Crores has been prescribed;
(ii) The restriction of 10% outgoing PSTN lines in a Domestic Call Centre (DCC) and submission of associated Bank Guarantee of Rs.10 Lakhs has been dispensed with;
(iii)The amount of Bank Guarantee has been reduced from Rs.2.5 Crores to Rs. 50 Lakhs and from Rs. 5 Crores to Rs. 1 Crore for each location in cases of resources sharing between International OSP and Domestic OSP;
(iv)Provision of separate category of Standalone OSP centers have been dropped and it has been merged with the Domestic OSPs category;
(v) Definition of ‘Telecom Resources’ also to include Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN);
(vi)Extension of definition of Hot sites to DOT-approved OSP Standby Third Party Hot Sites
(vii)Documents required to be submitted along with the application form has been simplified.

A single application form for registration of OSP and uniform format for registration certificate to be issued by all VTM units to avoid discrepancies and eventually making the process online, have been prescribed.

OSP companies provides Application Services like tele-banking, tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-trading, e-commerce, call centre, network operations centre and other IT Enabled Services.

OSPAI will look forward for additional policy changes with concerned regulatory agencies from time to time that will enable “India to be a preferred outsourcing destination”.