In the recent few years there have been several instances of Indian service providers setting up Latin American shops.

• TCS acquired Comicron, a BPO company in Chile
• Evalueserve, a leading research BPO set up its center in Chile
• Infosys BPO is planning on setting up a delivery center in Latin America.
• 24/7 Customer engaged a joint venture with Guatemala based Transactel.

Latin America is one of the fastest-growing region for contact centers. Estimates suggest that in Mexico alone, the number of call center agents working for outsourcers will grow to 85,000 agents by 2010, whereas those in Brazil will increase to 12,000 agents by 2010. Some of the leading players with offshore centers in the Latin American region include:

The USPs of the region

While the costs (especially salary costs) in the region are higher compared to offshore destinations like India they are still lower than those in the US. Some of the obvious benefits of Latin America as a strategic offshoring destination:

• Enables BPOs to service the large Spanish speaking population in the US
• Operates in somewhat similar time zones as the US
• The literacy rates are over 90%
• Bandwidth costs in Latin America are lower than in destinations like India because of proximity to the US

The Indian incline

Amongst the high-growth BRIC economies, India has charged ahead very rapidly in the services outsourcing space. During the growth of offshore outsourcing, India had a large number of indigenous startups with some culminating into highly valued acquisitions by global majors: (IBM acquired Daksh, EDS acquired MphasiS, Donnelley acquired OfficeTiger, CapGemini acquired Kanbay).

Expansion to Latin America is a very logical step for the several established Indian vendors looking to globalize their operations. Apart from geographic derisking, access to differing talents and proximity to the US, lower valuations of Latin American companies make the entry of Indian vendors relatively easier. Since the Latin American economies are "yet to arrive" and eager to grab a slice of the outsourcing action, it creates good acquisition opportunities for the cash-rich Indian vendors looking beyond India.

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