‘Indian IT cos looking to outsource to Egypt’
NEW DELHI: Earlier it was Vietnam , Poland or Philippines, and now it is Egypt which is fast scaling up the global outsourcing pyramid. Egypt has ITIDA chief executive Dr Hazem Y Abdelazim been ranked as one of the best outsourcing destinations after by many research analysts like Tholons and AT Kearney recently. Possesed with a varied language talent pool of Arabic, Spanish, French and English, cities like Giza and Cairo are acting as nearshoring locations for Europe and the Middle East.
All top Indian IT companies have announced plans to open centres in Egypt. The country’s apex IT association (ITIDA) IT Industry Development Agency is positioning its IT industry as a co-outsourcer for Indian IT companies. ITIDA chief executive Dr Hazem Y Abdelazim who is visiting India this week to forge bilateral ties with its Indian counterpart Nasscom, shares his insights on the growth of Egyptian IT industry. Excerpts:
How big is the Egyptian IT outsourcing industry? What makes Egypt an attractive outsourcing destination?
The IT-BPO industry in Egypt is growing. It is now establishing itself as an attractive location of global outsourcing. The country set itself an ambitious target for increasing its share of the global outsourcing market and aspires to achieve an industry turnover of $1.3 billion in the year 2010. This sector has managed to maintain a growth rate of 20% CAGR, and has attracted local and foreign investments of more than $8 billion since 2006.
Some of the world’s largest MNC companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Orange, Vodafone, Wipro, SQS, Valeo, Teleperformance are all investing in their global service delivery centers in Egypt.
Egypt’s position as a global hub for global IT-BPO outsourcing has been recognized by some of the world’s leading analysts. Cairo was recently listed seventh in the Global Services-Tholons study of emerging cities. Egypt was listed by Gartner in its Top 30 Offshore Locations study. Furthermore, in 2008, Egypt was named Offshoring Destination of the Year by the UK’s National Outsourcing Association (NOA).
