The IT-BPO industry in India has achieved impressive growth rates over the past decade and stood at USD 71.6 billion in 2009, said the report prepared by KPMG and ASOCIO (Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organisation).

The report, `Asia-Oceania Vision 2020: Enabling IT Leadership Through Collaboration’ was released here today at NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2010.

India is the current market leader in global sourcing supply, serving approximately 51 per cent of overall global sourcing demand.

“India is expected to achieve double-digit growth in the IT-BPO industry, with a focus on innovation. The country, however, needs to sustain cost competitiveness and develop the requisite skills of its large workforce,” Kumar Parakala, Global Head of Sourcing Advisory, KPMG in India, said.

“India could also develop complementary skills in hardware, so that it can showcase a more diversified portfolio of products and services.”

The report highlighted that the composition of demand will undergo a change from 2008 to 2020. The contribution of some of the developed countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand in the regional demand for IT-BPO service is likely to decrease.

However, the contribution of developing countries like India and Thailand is expected to increase in the coming years. Countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also expected to make their mark on the global sourcing supply landscape by 2020, it said.

According to NASSCOM, the Indian IT-BPO industry should aim to drive innovation, in addition to retaining its competitiveness. In order to successfully achieve its goal, key stakeholders of the Indian IT-BPO industry need to address the issues currently faced by the industry.

One of the focus areas of the KPMG-ASOCIO report was to identify the potential for effective collaboration among countries of the Asia-Oceania region. The report emphasises that if diversity within the region is effectively leveraged it could lead to collaborative growth.

Collaboration is likely to act as a facilitator for nations to address common challenges, leverage each others’ competitive advantage and thereby aim for a much larger target market in the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) industry by 2020, it said.

“ICT based transformation would be a major enabler of socio-economic transformation of Asia. We foresee an emergence of a diverse set of globally competitive IT organisations in the region, which would be the key enablers of this IT-based transformation,” ASOCIO President Ashank Desai said.