The rapid growth of the BPO industry, the newness of the whole process-outsourcing notion, and the number of high profile companies flocking to India has all the makings of a gold rush. It also has the makings of a lasting and incredibly large global trend that could leave both economies changed forever, in ways that we cannot yet comprehend. If you follow the Indian financial press, there is no doubt that the Indian BPO industry has firmly and unequivocally, arrived. But is this really the case?

The Indian BPO industry is no more than five years old. Still, there is enough intellect in the country to take a few quick wins as a platform, build a conceptual construct of commercial domination on top of it and promptly declare victory. The hard reality is that it takes many years to build businesses of lasting value and it takes even longer to build an industry that will withstand the rigors of international competition that will give no quarter, nor will expect any.

The Facts

Even though the entire BPO industry in India employs just 170,000 people (Citigroup alone employs 1.5 times that number), even though the largest company in the industry is way under $100 million in revenues, even though General Motors alone generates more revenue in three working days than the Indian BPO industry does in a year, even though no one has yet come up with an effective typology that is able to define the varied kind of work that is done, even though there are no industry benchmarks for performance, there is an unshakeable belief that BPO is here to stay and what we are doing is right.

There is, of course, a large grain of truth in all this. The industry does appear to have hit a sweet-spot created by a concatenation of events such as the economic slowdown in the US resulting in a ruthless need to cut costs, the availability of high speed telecom lines, economic liberalisation in India, and the coming of age of the it industry (which has created the much-needed credibility for Indian BPOs). However, the industry is very much a "toddler", to paraphrase Mr Narayana Murthy's recent observation at NASSCOM and to position it as anything else is to stunt the possibility of this toddler making the transition to strapping manhood.

The Problem

The problem, simply put, is this-there is insufficient emphasis and quality managerial thought being applied to strategy and direction. Every BPO company in India wants to grow as fast as possible and as a result, there is a mad scramble for size. Newspapers are littered with proud press releases of companies adding seats, adding people, adding infrastructure, opening new centres, and expanding.

There is precious little analysis about the type of work being done other than long expositions about "high end" and "low end" work. Unfortunately, that is simply not how BPO customers think. There is outsourceable work and non-outsourceable work-to describe it as "high end" and "low end" serves only to create a forensic categorisation that has very little value in actually building a BPO business. It is precisely this kind of simplistic thinking that inhibits original ideas around how to better fulfil customer needs.

Imagine a child who goes through the education system with no specific thought to what he wants to be when he grows up-he is largely influenced by parents or peer groups and has a no more than average chance of maximising his potential in life. There are enough of us who have done that and while it is not disastrous, it does not create exceptional individuals. Real winners are fired by passion. They know what they want to do. They go after it with focus and energy and they will stay with it for a long time regardless of what people say.

Lack Of Strategy

In very much the same way, as long as Indian BPO companies do not have a clear vision around what they want to be when they grow up, they will always be influenced by what everyone else is doing and run with the herd. Witness the first medical transcription success that created a multitude of similar companies. Witness the early call centre deals that have now created a faceless mass of contact centre companies. Nobody dares to be different because no one is thinking about what they should be-only what the others are doing. No one wants to stand out from the herd because that is a high-risk position.

This is very clearly a lack of strategy. Strategy is as much about deciding what not to do as about deciding what to do. If this be the case, you would expect a bpo company with a powerful strategy to actually turn down deals -something that is close to heresy in the industry. No one turns anything down because no one has a filter of what is the right business to be in. No one has such a filter because no one has a strategy around what they want to do. As a result, companies make generic investments in "seats" but no pro-active investments in "brains" (talk about high-end work!!)

Need For Purple Cows

As a result, one of the things that the Indian BPO industry does not stand out for is originality. The problem is only partly one of intent -in many ways it is also a structural one. Who has the motivation to be different?

There are three kinds of BPO companies in India: the captives, the VC-funded companies and the it-subsidiaries. The captives have no ability to choose the type of work they do (they are a cost centre working at the whim of the parent and only need to manage themselves as efficiently as possible); the independent companies are driven towards as rapid a value creation as possible, which makes slow, deliberate growth an unattractive choice.

This only leaves the BPO subsidiaries of it companies. These are the newest entrants to the BPO game and are set up as genuine profit centres. They are a longer-term play, which gives them a greater ability to take a careful, deliberate, and strategic approach to the market. It is really up to these companies to be the purple cows of the Indian BPO industry, to stand out from the herd and be different, to have the hunger to be exceptional and remarkable in what they do.

This is essential. If the Indian BPO industry does not have non-standard thinking, non-standard business models, and the courage to experiment we will lose the initial lead we have over our competitors. The real battle is not between one Indian BPO company and another but between India and China.

In order to compete in the global marketplace, India needs to build a full spectrum BPO industry, in all its rich variety-not just dominance in the call centre business. We need our BPO workforce to see the industry as a place that can give them long-term and fulfilling career opportunities and not as a place where they come to get their accents neutralised and move on. We need customers to see us as a strategic, viable, and low risk alternative to "doing it themselves" rather than as a tactical answer to next quarter's earnings problem.

Like it or not, the Indian BPO industry is at the crossroads. Our future will be determined by the choices we make today. The world seems to be giving us time to make these choices, but the Chinese, the Filipinos, the South Africans are watching. If we get it right, we will dominate; if not, we will follow. If we have the foresight, the staying power and the strategic vision, we will do it. If not, the world is not a forgiving place. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity ... and it is ours to lose.

Akshaya Bhargava is the CEO of Progeon, Infosys' BPO subsidiary. The title of this column is borrowed from Seth Godin's The Purple Cow