Bangalore, June 8 : Nasscom, the premier representative body of India's software and services industry, has ranked WNS the top third party IT-enabled services (ITES) company for fiscal 2004-05.

The rankings are based on revenues for fiscal 2004-05 reported according to the annual Nasscom survey on the IT industry's performance.

According to the survey, released Wednesday on the concluding day of Nasscom's "India ITES-BPO Strategy Summit" here, WNS emerged the frontrunner, followed by Wipro BPO Solutions and HCL Technologies BPO Services in second and third positions.

Nasscom, however, did not consider GECIS for ranking due its "captive status" till the end of 2004. Otherwise, it would have been the largest player by far.

Progeon, the BPO (business process outsourcing) subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, was ranked 10.

IBM Daksh, EXL Services, Mphasis BPO, Intelnet Global, ICICI OneSource and GTL were ranked between the fourth and ninth places.

The ITES-BPO segment contributed 30 percent of the total IT-ITES exports from India and witnessed a growth of 44.5 percent to achieve $5.2 billion in fiscal 2004-05.

ITES-BPO exports are estimated to achieve revenues of $7.3 billion by the end of fiscal 2005-06.

Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said with an ever-expanding portfolio and employee base, the third party players were able to sustain their growth rates over the years.

"The rankings have become an industry benchmark and reinforce our initiative of encouraging the IT industry to adopt global best practices," Karnik said.

Other highlights of the survey were that the ITES-BPO employee base had grown at a rate of 52.6 percent to 348,000 in fiscal 2004-05 from 42,000 in 2001-02.

During the year under review, the number of ITES-BPO companies increased to 410 from 285 in fiscal 2003-04.

Captive units continued to dominate the segment, accounting for over 65 percent of the value of work off-shored to India.

The domestic market for ITES-BPO too witnessed a significant increase in demand with the estimated value of work outsourced by domestic clients rising to $600 million in fiscal 2004-05 from $300 million in the previous fiscal.

Key drivers of growth in domestic demand for ITES-BPO included the high degree of competition in the domestic telecom and BFSI verticals.

ITES-BPO companies are also gaining significant traction in transaction processing, with firms balancing voice and non-voice business portfolios to diversify revenue and raise seat utilization.

While the leading global services firms scramble to ramp-up offshore operations across the country, Indian vendors are developing multi-location delivery capabilities.

Apart from India, firms are setting up facilities in China, Eastern Europe, Ireland and the Philippines. Within India, they are expanding to Tier II cities like Mysore, Nasik, Vishakhapatnam, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Thiruvananthapuram.

(IANS)