Monday, July 2

Salaries skyrocket in BPOs

Salaries in outsourcing companies are getting attractive. It’s not shortage of professionals that is driving the wages, but options beyond the plain vanilla BPO companies, as fresh graduates are being offered salaries which are five to six times more than what BPOs pay.

Fresh graduates (usually MBAs, CAs, engineers, law graduates and so on) with Knowledge Process Offshoring (KPO) and Legal Process Offshoring (LPO) companies are being offered starting packages of Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 per month. And some entry-level professionals engaged in complex processes with firms such as Exevo, Evalueserve or Pipal Research could be taking home salaries as high as Rs 50,000 per month. Just a couple of years back, this amount was less than half, at Rs 25,000 per year. Interestingly, according to HR experts, salaries for corresponding profiles in the US has gone up by just 15 per cent in the last two years. However, in the US such professionals get upwards of $55,000 a year.

Meanwhile, as far as hikes are concerned, most IT-ITeS companies now offer bi-annual salary hikes which range between 15-18 per cent. Thus, the effective annual hike for many employees comes to about 30-36 per cent. At this rate, the salary differential between US and India is narrowing fast

But that does not mean that India is losing out on the salary advantage front. On the contrary, experts say that since the kind of work getting outsourced to Indian BPOs and KPOs is of a high-end nature now, calling for a lot of value addition — salary rise is bound to happen.

Experts say that major salary growth has only been restricted in case of high-end and research based outsourcing jobs with KPO and LPO companies. “As far as legal outsourcing is concerned, there still is a major demand-supply mismatch. Clients’ concern is quality of the job. Till these factors are there, salaries will continue to see a meteoric growth,” says Som Mandal head of Noidabased LPO Fox Mandal IT (FMIT).

Currently, Indian outsourcing industry operates at about 60% of the cost in US, in KPOs however, the salaries levels are about 80% of that in US. BPOs however operate at salary levels of $7,000 per annum. At senior levels however, the trend is almost opposite. On the other hand, in areas such as equity and pharma research people are getting a handsome packet. A MBA from a good Bschool armed with a decent engineering degree can easily demand a package of Rs 6-7 lakhs per annum. On the other hand, an IIM or an IIT degree can take the compensation package up to Rs 10 lakh or above, depending upon the type of company. On the other hand the same qualification fetches about $40,000- $60,000 in US.

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