Ministry of IT and Electronics plans to expand its BPO promotion scheme, under Digital India programme, to include work-from-home options for incentivising firms to set up new units.
Besides, there is already a proposal to double the number of seats to be set up under the scheme from earlier 48,300. The total seat allocation in nine rounds of bidding has already crossed the earlier targeted number and reached 51,297.
Earlier this month, the ministry has given in-principle approval to around 20 companies for setting up new BPO/ITeS units in Tier II and III cities for 4,034 seats. Around 24 new units will be set up after the ninth round of bidding, a senior ministry official told DNA Money.
The BPO promotion scheme was launched in 2016 with an outlay of Rs 493 crore for three years, where financial support up to Rs 1 lakh/seat in the form of viability gap funding (VGF) was given to the firms. The aim was to generate employment for around 1.5 lakh people.
The plan is to expand the scheme to another three years with an outlay of around Rs 300 crore.
"Work from home jobs need to be incentivised as well, especially for women, who are not able to work full time due to family responsibilities. This has potential of creating another 50,000-1,00,000 new jobs," the official from the ministry said.
The new scheme will now be given final contours after the general elections are over and the new government takes over in June.
The scheme was launched to tap the potential of small cities, towns and rural areas in BPO/ITeS sector. Till then, the growth of the sector was restricted to the Metros and major cities. The government had planned special incentives towards the employment of women and specially enabled persons, besides incentives for generating employment beyond the target and wider dispersal within a state including rural areas. This also gave encouragement to local entrepreneurs. Special doles were given to hilly states of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttrakhand. According to ministry data, the BPO scheme has led to the creation of 268 BPO units in over 125 small towns.
Digital India has been one of the important and ambitious programmes of the current government to take inclusive growth across all hooks and corners of