Outsourcing as a common business practice has only recently taken hold in India. "We have always believed in focusing on our core expertise," says a spokesman for Tata Teleservices Ltd, one of the country's largest telecommunications companies. "Outsourcing of functions like telecalling and billing helps us focus on our core business."

Sandeep Aggarwal, vice-president for sales at Mumbai-based call-centre operator Intelenet Global Services, says even Indian companies in conservative industries such as banking are turning to outsourcing. Since 2007, Intelenet has hired 23% more people at call centres for Indian clients, bringing the headcount to 18,500.

India's biggest technology companies are also jumping into a domestic market they long ignored in favour of larger riches in the US and Europe. Some of the earliest outsourcers in the Indian market were foreign companies, such as International Business Machines Corp., which bought Daksh, an India-focused call centre and back-office services provider, in 2004.
Last month, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Wipro Ltd, India's second and third largest outsourcing outfits by revenue, both said they planned to expand the work they do for Indian clients, projecting growth of at least 30% a year as they hire and open offices in rural India.

"India is a focus area we are bringing in now," says Ashutosh Vaidya, head of the business process outsourcing unit for Wipro.

Intelenet executives say they can open an office in fewer than three months from scratch--but infrastructure is often the largest consideration when deciding which cities to expand into. At the Intelenet office in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, there is enough diesel fuel to run the call centre on backup generators for three days if the power lines go down, and the company has backup phone lines if one service goes out of order, says Aditya Arora, the company's operations manager for northern and eastern India.
An extra challenge for companies opening centres in rural areas is cultural.