Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) offers good business opportunities for Indian entities, and will help them in providing high value services, according to Gartner.

Estimated to be worth billions of dollars, KPO market provides varied services in areas such as marketing, legal processes, clinical trials and banking.

"KPO service offerings is a good opportunity for Indian BPO providers to provide high value services and thereby enabling them to develop higher margin work," IT research firm Gartner's Principal Research Analyst Arup Roy told PTI.

As per the various estimates, the global KPO market is likely to be valued at more than USD 15 billion in the coming years.

He noted that KPO services would help domestic players in developing relationships with clients at higher levels, which "could then be leveraged to upsell and cross-sell".

Many IT players including Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Cognizant offer various KPO services.

According to a recent Gartner research paper, KPO services would likely offer a combination of better processing methodology and an intellectually skilled workforce based predominantly in an offshore location.

"... Competition, therefore, is coming from a mix of specialist KPO providers, management consultants, BPO providers and existing conventional onshore industry specialists," the paper said.

Going by industry body Nasscom, the overall IT services and software sector is projected to be worth about USD 76 billion in financial year 2011.