Bangalore: NASSCOM President Som Mittal today advocated launching of proactive programmes between the IT industry and academic world to meet the ever-growing talent needs of the BPO sector.

Speaking after attending the signing of MoU between Indira Gandhi National Open University and Accenture India to launch a BPO-specific diploma programme here, he said a recent NASSCOM-Everest report indicated the potential for a five-fold growth in the Indian BPO sector from the present 11 billion dollars to 50 billion dollars by 2012.

'''This type of initiatives like introducing industry-specific courses will be very critical to sustain the growth curve of the BPO industry in India. An adequately skilled workforce will have to be an integral part of the BPO industry to achieve its goal,'' he said. ''Now outsourcing or offshoring has lost its meaning with drastic demographic changes we are witnessing,'' he said.

However, the BPO industry should now start to develop skills having multi-language capability and not just depend upon English.

It is also important that the BPO indutry spread its foot print beyond the major seven cities in the country where 80 per cent works were being carried out.

He said it was important to note that out of 2.4 lakh graduates the country produced per annum, 55 per cent students came from semi-urban or rural areas. These people should be equipped with enough soft skills so that they become employable in service and technology-intensive sectors. The proposed diploma in BPO was the right step in this direction, he said.

''Building a skilled force by offering this IGNOU programme, which accomodate one million students, is exciting. This is an experiment the world would be watching with interest,'' he said.