Gurgaon becomes best outsourcing destination

Gurgaon has emerged as the best destinations for outsourcing, according to

neoIT's study of city competi-tiveness in India. Of the 27 cities evaluated by

neoIT throughout 2004, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai followed Gurgaon

closely. Delhi, a top IT destination in the early 1990's, fared poorly in the

study, coming in at number 20. Other cities that received high rankings include

Mumbai and Noida. Challenger cities that are rapidly emerging as viable BPO and

ITO offshore destinations include Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandi-garh and

Indore.

neoIT evaluated the cities based on four primary criteria: People,

Infrastructure, Finan-cial and Catalysts. From this data, neoIT developed the

'Offshore Competitiveness Index' in order to rank the relative

competitiveness of each city as a destination for BPO or ITO.

"As the offshoring industry matures, location selection takes precedence

over sup-plier selection," stated neoIT mana-ging partner Avinash Vashistha.

"In the early days, the competition was between countries. Today, a more

likely scenario is to see Bangalore competing with Manila, instead of India

competing with the Philippines. To respond to this change in location selection

criteria, neoIT is providing clients with more market data about the specific

strengths and short-comings of individual cities within the top BPO and ITO

markets," he added.