The A.T. Kearney, a global consultancy major in alliance with the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), an Indian IT industry lobby, conducted a study recently titled ‘Location roadmap for IT-BPO growth: Assessment of 50 leading cities’.

The collaboration is a first-of-its-kind report for finding 50 locations in India suitable for the IT-BPO industry, in which Chandigarh was hailed as ideal in most aspects. ‘Chandigarh is a challenger location for the information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry’, the recent study says.

An indepth study of the selected 50 locations in India for the burgeoning IT/ BPO market, this A.T. Kearney-Nasscom report clearly underscores the advantages as well as the weakness of these places.  Mohit Rana, principal consultant, A.T. Kearney, said, ‘The BPO sector in Chandigarh is booming as here we have a plethora of young graduates with good communication skills.’

Rana added that this in the next two years, industry is likely to grow by 20-25 per cent. India’s BPO sector is expanding fast, both in terms of business as well as geographically.  A Nasscom officer informed that this segment involved over 700,000 professionals and made revenues of $11 billion in 2007-08 fiscal.