India’s outsourcing industry will provide an additional eight million jobs over the next decade as smaller cities grow in prominence, according to industry association, Nasscom.

The report, which looked at India’s top 50 cities for IT and business process outsourcing (ITO and BPO), predicts that less well-known outsourcing destinations in India will create approximately two million of these jobs.

Currently 90 per cent of the industry's workforce are based in India's top seven ITO and BPO cities but the report says this will drop to 75 per cent over the next decade as employers turn to smaller alternatives.

The seven key centres, such as Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, are becoming overloaded with new graduates and employees, meaning that the industry needs to encourage smaller cities such as Amedabad, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam to come to the fore, according to the report. But it says the government needs to begin building infrastructure and education facilities in the smaller cities to underpin this future growth.

Speaking about the rationale of the report, Mr.Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM said, “The development of only a few select set of cities has put severe pressure on the infrastructure, costs and also increased migration of resources. We see immense potential in the next set of locations if the right steps are taken now. The growth projections of the industry indicate that even the seven existing centres will see significant growth, however would need proactive planning and meticulous execution to support this growth.