Infosys BPO, the BPO arm of Bangalore-headquartered Infosys Technologies, is planning an aggressive push

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into the domestic market.

In a bid to service banking and capital markets outsourcers in India, the company plans to leverage low-cost rural BPO locations. The company is still mulling whether it should tie-up with an existing rural BPO or start one of its own, according to Kapil Jain, head of banking and capital markets, Infosys BPO.

“We are looking at domestic markets due to the growth in the financial sector as banks are wanting to adopt technology to increase efficiencies,” said Jain, in a telephonic interview. The company already has delivery centres in tier-II cities such as Pune, Udaipur and Mysore. “These centres may either tie-up with a rural BPO, we may start a new one or look at combination of both, which is being discussed at an organisational level.”

Several others firms such as Lason Inc of the US, Delhi-headquartered Datamation, HOV Services and Sai Seva Business Solutions too have had success setting up BPO centers in rural locations. Experts say that salary costs in rural BPO locations are almost half that of urban locations. Real estate too is available at substantially cheaper rates. Non-metro locations allow BPO the ability to offer language-processing capability at costs that Indian clients will not balk at paying. B Ramalinga Raju-promoted Byrraju foundation was one of the pioneers in tapping rural locations to set up BPO operations in India. Tata Business Support Services now provides voice services in Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali and Punjabi thanks to leveraging non-metro locations.

Infosys BPO is focussed on collections, processing, reconciliation, utilities, re-engineering, compliance, reporting, data and transaction handling. “We are not here for the cost arbitrage. What we bring in is expertise learnt from servicing customers worldwide.”

The banking and capital markets division has seen a marked improvement in getting deals in this quarter, though Jain refused to give exact number of deals won by the company. “The market sentiments have improved in this quarter, things have changed for the better. The deal talks, which had slowed down during the last quarter, are in advanced stages.”

The company has begun discussions with some public sector banks and private banks to offer BPO services. With banks increasingly focusing on distribution of third party financial products, Infosys BPO hopes to increase its business from banks further. “We have reached out to a few banks already,” said Jain. He, however, refused to name the banks as the discussions are in early stage.

Infosys BPO has been consistently ranked among the top 10 BPOs in India by Nasscom. The company has offices in India, Czech Republic, China, the Philippines, Poland, Bangkok and Mexico, with employee strength of 17,378. The firm closed financial year 2008-09 with revenues of $316.2 million.