Tamil Nadu unveils policy for rural BPOs

CHENNAI - The Tamil Nadu government Monday announced a special policy offering capital and training subsidy to rural business process outsourcing (BPO) units.

Tamil Nadu being a major Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hub and with the ICT industry now expanding to smaller cities, towns and into villages the state government felt the need for a comprehensive Rural BPO policy to increase employment opportunities in the rural areas.

According to the government, the BPO industry’s presence is mainly limited to Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore. In order to have a deeper penetration of the sector in the state, specific policy initiatives to attract BPO units to rural areas are necessary.

As per the new policy, the IT department will play the role of a facilitator helping the industry to find interested institutions, educational and others, to partner with a BPO.

The interested organisations would assist the Rural BPOs with infrastructure like floor space/power connection and others.

The Rural BPO policy hopes the faculty and students of educational institutions would benefit due to the exposure and experience and may promote entrepreneurship amongst rural youth.

The new policy offers a capital subsidy of 15 percent on capital investments (hardware equipments and others) subject to a maximum of Rs.300,000 to a rural BPO functioning for a minimum period of three years and directly employing a minimum of 100 trained persons.

For new rural BPO units having to train its operational staff, a training subsidy of Rs.1500 per month per person for three months would be provided by the government.