India's top 20 BPO companies

Unfazed by the global economic slowdown, the top 20 Indian business process outsourcing firms grew their combined exports earnings by 15% in 2009-10 to $6.1 billion, says the annual Dataquest Top 20 survey conducted by the flagship publication of CyberMedia, one of South Asia's largest specialty publishers.

The Dataquest Top 20 annual industry survey tracks the growth of IT and BPO industries and ranks the top companies by their revenue.

Eleven of the top 20 BPO exports firms recorded double-digit growth, while four registered negative growth. The rest grew at 4 per cent to 9 per cent.

There were two new entrants to the top 20 club: the BPO divisions of Cognizant BPO and 3i Infotech. This led to Syntel's BPO division and vCustomer dropping off the top 20 list.

The study says that BPO firms are now creating their own technology platforms to service global customers; and that the 'vanilla voice-based customer services' are now being increasingly serviced from call centres in the Philippines.

In non-voice backoffice services, knowledge-based services and technical support services, India is the undisputed king.

So click NEXT to check out which are India's 20 largest BPOs in terms of revenue. . .

1. Genpact

Revenue: Rs 4,592 crore (Rs 45.92 billion)

Growth: 12 per cent

Employee strength as on March 31, 2010: Over 41,000  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Pramod Bhasin (president & chief executive officer).

Genpact was born in 1997 as the India-based business process operations for GE Capital. In 2005, with equity investments from General Atlantic and Oak Hill Capital Partners, it became an independent company and was rebranded Genpact. It is India's No. 1 BPO firm.

Genpact manages business for companies around the world with a network of more than 30 operations centres in nine countries. Genpact offers services in finance and accounting, collections and customer service, insurance, supply chain and procurement, analytics, enterprise application and IT infrastructure.

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2. TCS BPO

Revenue: Rs 3,142 crore (Rs 31.42 billion)

Growth: 73 per cent

Employee strength as on March 31, 2010: 160,429 (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Ratan Tata (chairman); N Chandrasekaran (chief executive officer-cum-managing director).

TCS BPO is one of the leading players in the outsourcing industry. It offers services in areas such as finance and accounting, banking, HR outsourcing, KPO, insurance, payroll, healthcare, telecom, media, travel and entertainment.

TCS operates from more than 41 countries and has more than 155 offices across the globe. Its head office in India is located in Bengaluru. It has branches in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Goa, Hyderabad, Pune, Lucknow and many other places in India.

While Tata Consultancy Services is India's top software company, TCS BPO established a stronghold in the BPO space.

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3. Wipro BPO

Revenue: Rs 2,106 crore (Rs 21.06 billion)

Growth: 15 per cent

Employee strength as on july 23, 2010: 112,000  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Azim Premji (chairman), Girish Paranjpye (joint chief executive officer), Suresh Vaswani (joint chief executive officer).

Wipro BPO has carved a unique position in the outsourcing industry. In 2002, Wipro took a quantum jump in the BPO services by acquiring the then Spectramind. Wipro BPO Solutions, complements the services offered by Wipro Technologies, making it one of the largest BPO service players.

The company operates out of 10 different locations (India and Eastern Europe) serves clients across the globe. Wipro BPO clientele spans across banking and capital markets, insurance, travel and hospitality, hi-tech manufacturing, telecom and healthcare sectors.

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4. Aegis BPO

Revenue: Rs 1,919 crore (Rs 19.19 billion)

Growth: 23 per cent

Employee strength: More than 39,000  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key person: Aparup Sengupta (managing director and global chief executive officer).

The company's vision, mission and values include innovative solutions, a customer-centric service model and realistic client, employee and shareholder commitments.

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5. WNS Global Services

Revenue: Rs 1,858 crore (Rs 18.58 billion)

Growth: 4 per cent

Employee strength as in April 2010: 21,958  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Keshav Murugesh (chief executive officer); Alok Misra (chief financial officer).

WNS extends the enterprise of some of the world's best brands. Through its global delivery network and a comprehensive outsourcing services offering, it delivers business value to its clients by combining operational excellence and deep domain - industry and functional - knowledge.

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6. FirstSource Solutions

Revenue: Rs 1,723 crore (Rs 17.23 billion)

Growth: 10 per cent

Employee strength as of June 30, 2010: 24,697  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Ananda Mukerji (managing director and chief executive officer); Matthew Vallance (joint managing director).

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7. IBM Daksh

Revenue: Rs 1,610 crore (Rs 16.10 billion)

Growth: 8 per cent

Employee strength, estimate: Around 10,000 (includes IT services employees, too).

IBM Daksh was created by four profesionals -- Sanjiv Agarwal, Pawan Vaish, MJ Aravind and Venkat Tedanki -- who saw a great opportunity in the business process outsourcing space. With no business model to follow, it was a big challenge to set up the company.

IBM Daksh is known for a good leadership, a focussed vision and an undying passion. In April 2004, IBM Corporation acquired Daksh e-Services to serve as a global hub to manage business processes for clients from across the world.

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8. Aditya Birla Minacs

Revenue: Rs 1,404 crore (Rs 14.04 billion)

Growth: -2 per cent

Employee strength: More than 13,000 employees at locations in North America, Europe, and Asia at present  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key person: Deepak Patel (chief executive officer).

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9. Infosys BPO

Revenue: Rs 1,387 crore (Rs 13.87 billion)

Growth: 9 per cent

Employee strength as on June 30, 2010: 114,822  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: N R Narayana Murthy (chief mentor and non-executive chairman); S 'Kris' Gopalakrishnan (chief executive officer).

Infosys BPO Ltd, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, was set up in April 2002. Today, it is ranked among the leading BPO companies in India by Nasscom, Dataquest, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, Red Herring, FAO Today and NelsonHall.

Infosys BPO focuses on integrated end-to-end outsourcing through lesser costs. Infosys BPO operates in India, the Czech Republic,.

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10. Accenture India

Revenue: Rs 1,135 crore (Rs 11.35 billion)

Growth: 7 per cent

Employee strength: About 16,000  (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Harsh Manglik is chairman and country managing director, Accenture in India, and Nachiket Sukhtankar is managing director, Accenture delivery centre for technology in India.

By mobilising the right people, skills and technologies, Accenture is able to use its broad global resources, research-based knowledge and unmatched experience to help its clients progress towards high performance.

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11. HCL BPO

Revenue: Rs 1,044 crore (Rs 10.44 billion)

Growth: -3 per cent

Employee strength as on March 31, 2010: 65,000 (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Shiv Nadar, (founder, chairman); Ranjit Narasimhan (chief executive officer).

HCL BPO, a division of HCL Technologies Limited was established in 2001. With over 13,200 professionals operating out of India and Northern Ireland, HCL BPO runs fourteen delivery centres across India, UK and Malaysia.

HCL BPO offers multilingual support in eight European languages and eight Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC) languages.

HCL BPO's focuses on sectors like telecom, retail, banking and financial services, insurance, hi-tech & manufacturing, and media, publishing and entertainment.

Shiv Nadar is the founder, chairman and chief strategy officer of HCL Technologies.

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12. Exl Service

Revenue: Rs 966 crore (Rs 9.66 billion)

Growth: 11 per cent

Employee strength as on March 31, 2010: More than 11,500 (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Vikram Talwar (executive chairman, New York, US); Rohit Kapoor (president and chief executive officer, New York, US).

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13. Xchanging India

Revenue: Rs 956 crore (Rs 9.56 billion)

Growth: 14 per cent

Employee strength: Over 9,000.

Key person: David Andrews, CEO, Xchanging.

Xchanging has set up a 1,000-seat BPO in the Tier-3 town of Shimoga near Bengaluru. The centre is spread over 37 acres.

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14. Cognizant BPO

Revenue: Rs 858 crore (Rs 8.58 billion)

Growth: 28 per cent

Employee strength as on May 4, 2010: 80,300 (includes IT services employees, too).

Key people: Francisco D'Souza (president & chief executive officer); Lakshmi Narayanan (vice chairman).

With 50 global delivery centres, Cognizant combines a unique onsite/offshore delivery model infused by a distinct culture of customer satisfaction.

A member of the Nasdaq-100 Index and S&P 500 Index, Cognizant is a Forbes Global 2000 company and a member of the Fortune 1000 and is ranked among the top information technology companies in BusinessWeek's Info Tech 100, Hot Growth and Top 50 Performers listings.

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15. Convergys India

Revenue: Rs 801 crore (Rs 8.01 billion)

Growth: -2 per cent

Employee strength: About 14,000.

Key person: President and CEO: David F Dougherty.

Convergys delivers a broad range of customer and HR solutions, backed by technology, business analytics and consulting services that help create valuable relationships between clients, their customers and their employees to improve business performance.

It helps clients recruit, service and retain customers and employees using innovative technologies that increase efficiencies, satisfaction, loyalty and workforce effectiveness while decreasing costs.

Its areas of operation include the US, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzeland, Turkey, UK, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and Columbia.

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16. 3i Infotech

Revenue: Rs 779 crore (Rs 7.79 billion)

Growth: 49 per cent

Employee strength: More than 15,000 at present (includes IT services employees, too).

Key person: V Srinivasan (chief executive officer-cum-managing director).

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17. Intelenet Global

Revenue: Rs 775 crore (Rs 7.75 billion)

Growth: 4 per cent

Employee strength as in June 2010: Over 31,000 (includes IT services employees, too).

Key person: Susir Kumar (chairman and managing director).

The company's focus is on providing solutions to global organisations seeking to reduce costs while consistently maintaining superior service levels.

Their solutions extend across all strata of BPO, technology and consulting and can be applied to organisations in industries as diverse as banking and finance, insurance, retail, telecom, information technology, travel and hospitality.

Areas of operation: Australia, India, Philippines, Mauritius, USA, Central America.

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18. Hinduja Global Solutions

Revenue: Rs 759 crore (Rs 7.59 billion)

Growth: 15 per cent

Employee strength: About 14,000 associates across India, the Philippines, Mauritius, Canada, and the United States (includes IT services employees, too).

Key person: Partha De Sarkar (chief executive officer).

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19. 24/7 Customer

Revenue: Rs 660 crore (Rs 6.60 billion)

Growth: 18 per cent

Employee strength: About 10,000 (includes IT services employees, too).

Headquartered in Los Gatos in California, US, 24/7 Customer provides BPO services through its facilities in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

It provides voice and e-mail based customer support services to its clients which include leading Global 500 insurance, telecom, financial services, hospitality, logistics, retail and technology companies.

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20. MphasiS BPO

Revenue: Rs 542 crore (Rs 5.42 billion)

Growth: -5 per cent

Employee strength: About 33,000 (includes IT services employees, too).

Key person: Ganesh Ayyar (chief executive officer).

MphasiS BPO provides value-added voice and transaction-based contact center and business process outsourcing services to Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Its strengths include customising onshore, nearshore, and offshore solutions. Its BPO centres in Bengaluru, Mangalore, Pune, Mumbai, Noida, Ahmedabad and Puducherry in India offer English language support, and the Tijuana, Mexico facility offers Spanish and bilingual solutions to target the Hispanic market in the US.