Liberalised norms for voice-based BPOs to spur growth of sector: Nasscom

Industry body Nasscom on Wednesday welcomed the government's move to further liberalise guidelines for voice-based BPOs and said this would accelerate the growth of the USD 194 billion IT-BPM sectors, while significantly improving the ease of doing business in the country.

In a bid to cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government has now removed the distinction between domestic and international units and permitted interconnectivity between all types of OSP centers.

This will allow global companies, say airlines, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that previously required dedicated, separate infrastructure.

Nasscom, in a tweet, said the revised OSP (Other Service Providers (OSPs) guidelines issued by the government is a "welcome step".

It added that with these guidelines in place, the IT-BPM industry will be able to attract more investments and enable ease of doing business in the country.

Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said with access to world-class talent and now, the ability to work from anywhere, India will significantly strengthen its lead as a preferred hub for the BPM industry.

In a statement, Nasscom said the government has issued clarifications on all the points raised by the industry body earlier, ''which are not only beneficial to the industry growth but will also put the Indian IT-BPM sector in a competitive space, in the context of the telecom regulatory regime''.

''The new guidelines will enable the industry to fully leverage technology to implement work from anywhere in a seamless manner and provide greater flexibility to utilise their infrastructure and design their service delivery model to better serve the global market,'' Nasscom said.

The reforms will add to India's attractiveness in terms of ease of doing business, it added.

The industry body explained that the new measures in the guidelines will enable remote agents of the OSP to directly connect to the customer EPABX (Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange) or any centralised EPABX without the need to connect with the OSP centre, thereby avoiding double hop.

This will also allow interconnectivity between OSPs with non-OSPs for both voice and data, which has been one of the key recommendations given by Nasscom earlier.

Permitting centralised internet connectivity using SDWAN (software-defined networking in a wide area network), keeping all non-voice based entities outside of the OSP purview, enabling the use of third-party EPABX and the removal of the distinction between domestic and international OSPs will provide the industry with greater flexibility and ease of compliance, Nasscom said.

''Combined with the first set of OSP reforms in November 2020, this is significant ease of doing business reform for the industry. Access to hybrid working will give our industry an epic boost and significantly expand access to talent, increase job creation and catapult Indian IT-BPM to the next level of growth and innovation in the country,'' it added.

Top industry executives echoed similar views.

WNS Group Chief Executive Officer Keshav Murugesh told PTI that further liberalisation of the OSP guidelines by the government is another step in the right direction.

"It will allow the Indian IT-BPM industry to rapidly adopt the work-from-anywhere model, embrace the future of work, and bolster the ease of doing business. While the government had set in motion the process of OSP policy changes in November 2020, the latest simplification will substantially lessen the industry's compliance burden that would've otherwise inhibited delivery to clients, especially for essential services," he added.

NV Tyagarajan, Chief Executive Officer of Genpact, tweeted that the latest relaxation in rules "should help us all serve our clients better and grow faster".

PayPal India Director (Corporate Affairs) Nath Parameshwaran also tweeted in support of the move saying this is a "very timely measure" for the IT-BPM industry.

Welcoming the announcement, FICCI ICT Committee Chairman Virat Bhatia said liberalisation of the OSP guidelines will ''provide a big stimulus for growth of OSP industry in India, further creating immense opportunities, income and employment for the country.'' Under the new rules, restrictions on data interconnectivity between any BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) centre of the same company, a group company, or any unrelated company has been done away with, allowing for massive flexibility in resource management for BPO operations.

The connectivity norms have also been eased for remote call centre agents, in any location, to link with customers.

Overall, the measures would lead to major cost savings and significantly improve utilisation for BPOs, positioning India as a favourable hub for IT-enabled service operations.

While OSPs will have to self regulate their operations and there is no requirement to submit reports to Telecom Department on a routine basis, players will have to maintain Call Data Record, usage data record and system log for all customer calls for a stipulated period, and abide by data security norms.

Simply put, OSPs are entities providing applications services, IT-enabled services, call centre services, or any kind of outsourcing services using telecom resources.

Gaurav Dayal, Partner at Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan Attorneys, said the reforms announced on Wednesday should lead to a reduction in compliance cost and improve the ease of conducting the BPO business in India.

In November last year, the government had announced simplified guidelines for BPOs and ITES companies to reduce the compliance burden on them and to facilitate the 'Work From Home' and 'Work From Anywhere' framework.

The changed rules for OSPs at that time had sought to create a friendly regime for 'Work from Home' and 'Work from Anywhere' and had also removed frequent reporting obligations for such companies.

The Indian BPO industry has the ''extraordinary potential'' to rise to USD 55.5 billion (Rs 3.9 lakh crores) by 2025, Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a briefing.

The new guidelines will enable the BPO industry to use technology and connectivity more flexibly to implement `work from anywhere', norms which were announced late last year.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)