NASSCOM, the industry association of Indian IT and ITeS providers, has projected the country's software, BPO, and hardware exports to cross USD 22.9 billion in the current fiscal year. The industry is also expected to provide direct employment to over one million people. NASSCOM projects the overall software and services market would reach USD 20 billion, in the current fiscal, with exports growing 30 percent to 32 percent to reach USD 16.3 billion.

The recent trend of IT enabled Services companies (BPO/ Contact Centers) is to expand into Mini Metros., to rationalize the operating cost and arrest the growing attrition rates. Some recent announcements:

* HSBC is opening a center at 'Viskhapatnam'.

* Quark, Infosys and Dell have set up shop in 'Chandigarh'.

* Wipro has opened in 'Kochi' and 'Bhubhaneswar'

* GE has expanded into 'Jaipur' &

* WNS at 'Nasik'

Indian Government in the recent Budget has allocated 10,000 Crore Rupees (approx 2200 Million USD) for developing the Infrastructure across the country.The Local State Governments have started vying against each other to make the smaller cities popular by, improving the infrastructure, adopting proactive government policies to enable these moves.

Private developers, in these Mini Metros are learning to understand the space requirements, power redundancies and telecom connectivity requirements for ITeS operations and are developing facilities incorporating these requirements economically.

Among the Major Metros the southern Indian city of Chennai is fast emerging as an attractive destination for high-end BPOs in financial services, healthcare, and other back-office works for MNCs. Xansa, Accenture, Standard Chartered, Eserve(Citibank), Abn- Amro, World Bank, have a sizeable investment in Chennai.

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