India's business process outsourcing industry will soon be edged out by the emerging knowledge processing or KPO sector as the biggest revenue grosser, according to an industry expert.
Kiran Karnik, president, National Association of Software and service Companies, on Friday while predicted that the country's IT exports would grow by 32 per cent to touch $22.3 billion by the end of the current fiscal, said KPO was set to outgrow the BPO sector in the coming years.
Although he did not quantify the potential of the KPO industry, Karnik said a lot of foreign companies were looking at India for setting up research and development services.
China and East European nations were the major states, which were well poised to give a tough fight to India in the sector, he observed.
Karnik said there was a need for quality talent, for which Nasscom had initiated an industry-academia programme to have a relook at the education curricula and faculty training.
Though it was the government's job to bring about positive changes in the education sector, he said Nasscom too would play a proactive role in this regard.
He said KPO jobs would require more domain expertise, and could be termed as a result of the evolution of the BPO industry.
Asked about the contribution of tier-II cities in the overall scenario, he said there was strong growth emanating from these regions.
On other initiatives of Nasscom, Karnik said there was a move to set up a national registry of employees in the BPO sector. The data would be validated by a third party.
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