India global outsourcing hub for commodity financial services may gain thousands of jobs
Rani Chatterjee,  Special Correspondent
December 05, 2004 

The next wave of BPO is here. This time it is hot worldwide commodities making the difference. India is ready to emerge as a global outsourcing hub for commodity financial services. In the process thousands of jobs are being created and much of these services are export oriented job growth intensive.

From coffee and cocoa in west Africa to oilseeds in eastern Europe, India is now flooded with calls to manage foreign demat commodity accounts and warehouse receipts sitting right here. What makes this business bigger and better than ordinary call centres is not just the sheer volumes in commodity trading. Indian commodity BPOs will be offering high-value, complex back-office processes to foreign banks. That puts them higher up the value chain than the classic low-cost, low-end transactional services offered by the typical neighbourhood BPO. Overseas banks from countries like Ivory Coast, Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa, Russia and Bulgaria are queuing up for outsourcing cheap and efficient management of accounts and commodity balances. That makes it an excellent business opportunity for apex service providers like National Securities Depository Ltd and Central Depository Services of India Ltd.