IT boom to shift to smaller cities

India's smaller cities and towns would register a faster growth in software and business process outsourcing exports as information technology and BPO firms, backed by booming offshore orders, expand into secondary cities to arrest costs and talent attrition, S N Zindal, director general, software technology parks of India said.

"The secondary cities will register a faster growth of five times in the next five years," he said at the technology outsourcing conference at Bangalore IT.COM.

As IT and BPO companies expand into cities like Madurai, Mangalore, Bhopal, Jaipur, Mysore and Coimbatore among others, the STPI, anticipating the change, has increased its earth stations to about 29 locations across the country from 15 in 2000, which were predominantly in big cities.

"We are planning to add more (STPI units in smaller towns) in the coming days," he said.

STPI, a state-owned body to promote software exports by providing communication links and clearances, has helped India achieve phenomenally in software and BPO sector.

Zindal said telecom infrastructure in smaller cities were available, which included fibre optic and satellite links, besides cost of operations being lower than in metros and a far lower attrition of talent than in big cities.

"We are urging the big companies to look beyond the metro and big cities for their second or third software or BPO centre," he said, while adding that metros would continue to be preferred places for software exports.