The combined export earnings of the top 20 Indian BPO firms grew by 15 per cent to touch USD 6.1 billion in the 2009-10 fiscal, according to a survey.

Though marginally lower than the growth of 17 per cent achieved in the 2008-09 fiscal, export revenue of the top 20 BPO firms grew twice as fast as that of the top 20 IT firms, which witnessed an increase by 7.8 per cent during the same period, according to the annual Dataquest Top 20 survey conducted by CyberMedia, South Asia's largest speciality publisher.

Export revenue of the oldest BPO firm, Genpact, grew by 12 per cent to Rs 4,592 crore (excluding IT revenues), the survey report said. Genpact's BPO business earned the maximum export revenue out of all the Indian BPO firms and was ranked No. 1 in the list.

The BPO division of TCS, ranked No. 2 by Dataquest, grew by a whopping 73 per cent to Rs 3,142 crore to close the gap with Genpact. The recent acquisition of Citigroup's captive subsidiary by TCS drove the company's high growth.

After TCS BPO, the other fastest growing companies were 3i InfoTech, which saw export revenue grow by 49 per cent to Rs 779 crore, Cognizant BPO (28 per cent growth to Rs 858 crore), Aegis BPO (23 per cent to Rs 1,919 crore) and 24/7 Customer (18 per cent to Rs 660 crore), it said.

Eleven of the Dataquest Top 20 BPO exports firms recorded double-digit growth, while four registered negative growth.

The rest grew between four to nine per cent. .

The top 20 BPO export firms were Genpact, TCS BPO, Wipro BPO, Aegis BPO, WNS Global Services, Firstsource Solutions, IBM Daksh, Aditya Birla Minacs, Infosys BPO, Accenture India, HCL BPO, Exl Service, Xchanging India, Cognizant BPO, Convergys India, 3i Infotech, Intelenet Global, Hinduja Global Solutions, 24/7 Customer and MphasiS BPO, the report said.

The entry of the BPO divisions of Cognizant BPO and 3i Infotech?led into the Top 20 club also marked the exit of Syntel's BPO division and vCustomer from the list. Nine of the Top 20 entities were divisions or subsidiaries of broader IT companies, while the rest were pure play or predominantly BPO firms.

Out of the 11 pure play BPO firms, five were listed (Genpact, WNS, Firstsource, Exl, Hinduja Global), two were privately held by promoters or PE firms (Intelenet, 24/7 Customer), two were subsidiaries of non-Indian companies (Convergys India and Xchanging India) and two were owned by large Indian corporate houses (Aegis and Aditya Birla Minacs).

The survey brought out two major trends in the BPO industry. The first trend revolved around use of intellectual property-based technology platforms, with BPO firms creating their own technology platforms to service global customers.

The BPO services, once popularly known as IT-enabled services, were now increasing turning out to be 'IT-enhanced services'.

The second major trend, according to the survey, was for providing 'vanilla voice-based customer services' from call centres in the Philippines, including delivery centres set up there by Indian BPO firms.

While the trend was emerging for some time, during 2009-10, call centre agents deployed by several Indian BPO firms in the Philippines grew to surpass the corresponding headcount in India.

However, when it came to non-voice back-office services, knowledge-based services and technical support services, India continued to remain the No 1 choice, the survey said.

The Dataquest Top 20 annual industry survey, now in its 23rd year, tracks the growth of the IT and BPO industries and ranks the top companies by their revenue.