KNOWLEDGE SERVICES INDIA

The knowledge services sector is a major contributor to service sector revenues in India and is considered to be one of the key growth drivers of developing Indian economy. Its contribution to GDP of India has reached 5.4 percent. The key reason contributing toward building ‘Brand India’ in the knowledge services domain is the availability of quality manpower at competitive cost. India provides a large pool of engineers, post-graduates and PhDs at significantly lower cost.

The main segments of knowledge services in India are as following:

Knowledge Process Outsourcing:

Knowledge processes are those high value added processes  which requires high level skills and good domain knowledge. These processes when outsourced a new business activity, known as knowledge process outsourcing, comes into picture.

Cost savings, operational efficiencies, availability to highly skilled workforce and improved quality are all important factor contributing to outsourcing of high-end processes to India

Since the KPO domain is a knowledge-intensive industry, different service segments require a different skill-set and industry experience.

·         During 2000-01, the KPO industry was having 9,000 billable professionals who generated total revenues of USD 260 million. However, by 2006-07, the number of billable professionals had increased to 75,400 employees who were responsible for generating revenues of USD 3.05 billion.

·         The industry witnessed a CAGR of 51 percent in revenues and 43 percent in the number of billable professionals.

·         It is estimated that by 2010-11, the Indian KPO market will be valued at approximately USD 11-12 billion. The industry will witness a CAGR of 38 percent in revenue and 36 percent in the number of billable professionals during the next four years.

·         Data management, search and analytics services, and contract research services form the largest segments in the KPO industry with 19 percent share each.

·         The legal services and intellectual property outsourcing services segment is expected to gain momentum in the near future.

The Indian KPO industry comprises four different types of vendors on the basis of their operations or the initiation of operations. The following are the different categories of vendors:

·         BPO companies venturing into the KPO services domain (eg., Progeon, WNS)

·         Individual companies providing specialised services; captive centres included in this segment (e.g., Evalueserve)

·         Highly specialised groups of individuals offering specialised services to global markets (e.g., the Pharma research team)