A recent study has discovered that India is emerging as a BPO hub. India not only explicates three out of five top known worldwide outsourcing destinations, but also has the maximum number of rising cities in this field.

According to a study by CyberMedia’s Global Services magazine, the top five well-established hubs for outsourcing include Bangalore, India's National Capital Territory, Manila, Mumbai and Dublin.

The study conducted in association with Tholons, an investment advisory firm showed that Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune are the top three emerging hubs, whereas Kolkata is on fifth and Chndigarh enjoys the ninth rank in the list.

Pradeep Gupta, publisher of CyberMedia, said, “Global Services sees the top 50 emerging cities grabbing a much bigger chunk of the global information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) service pie in the next three years.”

Avinash Vashistha, chairman and chief executive of Tholons, said, “With the demand-supply gap widening, newer tier II cities will play a critical role in re-engineered globalisation models.”

In terms of established centres, China comes after three hot cities, and Shanghai is placed eighth, Beijing at tenth and Shenzhen at thirteenth. The country also has five emerging destinations.

While commenting on individual cities, the study also stated that Chennai is a well-known center for automotive engineering services, product development and healthcare, home to companies like Accenture, Cognizant, EDS, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

Hyderabad, referred to as Cyberabad, has a government that is planning to create 250,000 new IT jobs in the next two years. Some players there include Accenture, CSC, HCL, HP, Infosys, Oracle, Satyam and UBS.

Pune, called "Oxford of the East", is home to many education institutions that make it striking for companies like Cognizant, KPIT, EXL, Msource, Aviva, Kanbay and Zensar. The city also has reasonably lower operating costs.

Kolkata is on the list for its strong educational infrastructure, inferior costs and even lower attrition rates. The IT industry there is rising at 70 percent annually and has leaders such as Cap Gemini, Cognizant, Genpact, HSBC, IBM and Oracle.