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Many of us would not take it seriously, but I believe that the announcement
of the designate government of Karnataka about creating job opportunities for
the semi-urban and rural people via the BPO route, will see action. This
statement will be both politically as well as economically correct.
Ever since we have seen the boom in mobile phones, the need to reach out to
markets beyond metros, big cities and towns, has been a key concern as well as
challenge for telecom companies. Similarly, the IT players are also sure that
growth for them would come from small places.
I am sure that with more telecom companies focusing on semi-urban and rural
areas, the quality of telecom networks and services will drastically improve in
these places. This is likely to help in more and faster adoption
of Internet, broadband and ebiz, if I am allowed to stretch a little bit. And
this is likely to result in more demand for desktops, laptops and other related
products and services, besides smart phones in these areas.
On the other hand, if BPOs and ITeS organizations are also able to expand
operations in semi-urban areas (and later, who knows, even to rural areas), one
of the first impacts will be sudden rise in population with sizeable disposable
income. I have seen how a place like Gurgaon, within a matter of a few years, is
flooded with people and households with fat purses-thanks to the BPOs.
Therefore, Gurgaon today also has a sizable presence of small and local IT
solution providers, who provide cost-effective and sometimes even specialized
services to the emerging small and medium enterprise community in this city and
its surroundings. Clearly, the growth of telecom and BPOs will create new
business opportunities for solution providers. They just have to be on the
lookout. Page(s) 1
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