US$ 1 b BPO target by 2015 realistic - Firstsource CEO

Ravi LADDUWAHETTY

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s target of US$ 1 billion for Sri Lanka’s Business Process Outsourcing by 2015 was realistic, India’s largest listed BPO company - Firstsource CEO Mathew Vallance said yesterday.

President Rajapaksa’s target is realistic in the light of the Sri Lankan economy growing. The consumer industry, the banking and telecommunications industries are also growing.

Mathew Vallance

In order to service their clients effectively with the quality of service and to reduce the cost of operations there is lot of value that these industries could add with the expertise that we could offer, Vallance told Daily News Business.

“We think that the market is sizeable enough for us to expand. There is a lot of value that we can bring,” he said.

Responding to a question as to how he sees Firstsource competing in a limited space in Sri Lanka he said: “We will compete in areas that we have strength in and in markets such as telecommunications as we have a lot of capability in that area. We have effective customer life cycle management and customer back office processing, technical support, collections and technical support management.

“When pointed out that Sri Lanka’s IT and BPO industry has a mandate of US$ 1 billion and a larger percentage of that was expected from the BPO segment and what could be Firstsource’s contribution could be, Vallance said that as far as he could see, the industry was growing at a consistent 20 percent year-on-year at this stage and said he expected it to grow at a higher rate than that.

He also asserted that there was no reason as to why his company could not be the number one player in the Sri Lankan domestic market.

“We will give professional leadership to be the number one BPO company in Sri Lanka’s domestic market,” he said.

Asked whether in his opinion where there was enough skills ( capacity) for exponential growth and where he thinks the industry should be focusing to increase capacity, he said there were lots of skills in Sri Lanka and that his firm was one which invests in skills which the company was building.

He said the company was building strong training programs to bridge the skills which was an important part of what the company was doing.

Commenting on increasing the capacity in the market, Vallance said the company would be bringing in a strong education system and would be drawing from the strong education systems that prevailed in Sri Lanka and that was what attracted his company to invest in Sri Lanka.

Asked what the focus of the company would be, he said telecommunications, banking and insurance were the sectors that the company was looking at and added that healthcare was also one of the potential areas that they could look at in Sri Lanka according to the industry.

He also said that the consumer industry was something that they could explore and travel tourism and transport were the other integral part of the Sri Lankan economy which could also be addressed.