India's (third party) business process outsourcing (BPO) exports reached $4.6 billion (Rs 20,890 crore) during 2006-07, registering a growth of 47 per cent says Dataquest's 20th annual survey of the Indian IT Industry.

This makes the BPO chunk over 55 per cent of the entire BPO-ITeS pie as estimated by Nasscom.

The survey also revealed its list of top 20 BPOs, which contributed nearly three-fourth of the total BPO exports, $3.57 billion (Rs 16,094 crore), and recording a growth of 59.4 per cent.

Genpact topped the list with a revenues of Rs 2,220 crore, Transworks Rs 1,510 crore, IBM Daksh Rs 1,260 crore, while TCS [Get Quote] BPO and Cambridge Solutions [Get Quote] followed with Rs 1,107 crore and Rs 1,000 crore, respectively.

Revealing the churn, WNS Global Services took the fifth place with Rs 990 crore followed by Convergys India Rs 890 crore, Firstsource Rs 809 crore and HCL [Get Quote] BPO Rs 746 crore.

The study also identifies that during the year top 20 BPO companies added 57,784 new employees to take the employee base to 216,967 people.

Identifying that third party exports from India have overtaken the captives' exports, Dataquest analyst and executive editor Shyamanuja Das said, "This change has happened because of two reasons. One, captives have not really grown much. And two, the revenues of large Indian third party providers such as Genpact, Transworks, and TCS include significant onshore components now, because of acquisitions."

The knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) sector also poses huge opportunities for the players with the companies such as Infosys [Get Quote] BPO, WNS Global Services and EXL Services entering the KPO space through organic as well as inorganic means.

Companies such as IBM Daksh, Aegis, MphasiS, Intelenet, HTMT Global, Sitel India are also increasing their domestic focus.

The survey also noted that the much-awaited leveraging of IT for BPO started happening in a major way. While the IT services firms have maintained that this is their competitive advantage on the ground Genpact and WNS, two BPO players, stole a march over others in offering platforms.