The outcry in the West over outsourcing IT jobs to India has given the industry free publicity and brought a wave of inquiries from foreign clients, one of the country's biggest outsourcing firms said.
Rohit Kapoor, chief executive officer of EXL, which provides financial outsourcing services, said the protests have made mid-sized firms more aware of the way big companies are slashing costs and boosting profits through outsourcing.
EXL is one of India's five top-ranked business process outsourcing (BPO) companies by sales. It earned 28 million dollars in revenues in the financial year to March 2004.
"We've seen more client visits from mid-tier to small companies in this year than before. The outcome (of the outsourcing protests) has been more positive than negative," Kapoor told AFP in an interview.
"The backlash has had no impact on our business. It has provided free publicity for Indian BPOs," he added.
IT-enabled services, which include call centres and BPO work, clocked 46 percent growth in total revenues to 3.6 billion dollars for the year ended March, industry figures show.
Kapoor said the increasing interest shown by foreign small- and medium-sized companies was good news as they were not only likely to seek outsourcing of services, but also consultancy advice on systems.
A host of foreign firms have set up Indian bases or outsourced work to Indian firms to take advantage of a vast pool of computer-literate, English- speaking workers whose pay packets are a fraction of their Western peers.
Officials of NASSCOM, India's leading software body, have called the protests against outsourcing politically inspired as overseas firms saw no financial merit in reducing such work.
US Democratic candidate John Kerry has promised that if elected president, he would undertake the most sweeping reform of international tax law in four decades to halt the flow of US jobs overseas.
"If there is a law, it will definitely affect us. Right now, it (restrictive legislation) is only limited to some government contracts," said Kapoor. But he said he believed it was unlikely comprehensive anti-outsourcing legislation would ever be passed.
"US jobs growth has picked up and therefore concerns about employment have rapidly gone down. You can easily get another job," he said. "But there's always going to be some level of noise."
The Indian IT industry says outsourcing of jobs to developing countries has actually helped Western nations create more jobs as their profitability and competitiveness have improved.
Kapoor said his company's decision to specialise in financial services outsourcing work had helped it more than double its revenues annually.
He said the business revenues of BPO firms that did not specialise had been growing at just 50 to 60 percent annually. "We believe domain knowledge and focus will be very important for the future. What is also going to be critical is the size and scale of operations, ability to access capital and very strong management," he said.
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