India further liberalises guidelines for Other Service Providers

India has further liberalized the guidelines for Other Service Providers (OSPs). These entities are Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organisations giving voice based services, in India and abroad. Speaking to newsmen in New Delhi, Information and Technology and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, there is now no distinction between Domestic and International OSPs to bring in better synergies among businesses. 
Prasad informed that India’s BPO industry is one of the largest in the world. He said the industry has a potential for double digit growth reaching upto 3.9 lakh crores by 2025. The minister said, steps like Electronics Manufacturing Productivity Linked Incentive scheme, dedicated scheme of Electronic Manufacturing Cluster and dedicated PLI scheme for Telecom Equipment are initiatives in achieving Atma Nirbhar Bharat(self reliant India).
He said, under the liberalised guidelines announced, EPABX (Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange) of the OSP can be located anywhere in the world. Prasad said, OSPs apart from utilising EPABX services of the Telecom Service Providers can also locate their EPABX at third party data centres in India. The minister said that DoT has already exempted Data Based Services from the OSP regulations and the regulations exempted OSPs from requirement of any registration. Prasad informed that no bank guarantees were to be furnished and work from home and work from anywhere was also permitted. 
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that, in order to encourage our BPO industry, Other Service Providers, OSP guidelines that were liberalised in November 2020 have been simplified even further. In a tweet, Moid said that it offers greater ease of business and regulatory clarity. He said, this will further reduce compliance burden and help our tech industry.