At a time when the global financial meltdown is staring the Indian IT-BPO industries in the face, a market research survey suggests that leading software services firms having back-office operations are likely to reap the rewards in the BPO market.

The survey report from research firm Datamonitor says that companies like TCS and Cognizant accounted for almost 80 per cent of the total value of large BPO contacts awarded in the last 12 months with nearly 55 per cent of all big BPO deals being signed by IT companies with BPO arms.

"While the BPO players did account for 44.7% of all announced deals, their cumulative contract value reflects only 19.5% of overall deal value," said Vamshi Krishna Mokshagundam, analyst with Datamonitor India adding that "BPO services are being increasingly signed on as part of a bigger IT services contract."

The largest BPO deal in recent times came from Citigroup which sold its BPO arm to TCS for a whopping 2.5 billion dollars. The deal is noteworthy from the point that a multi-billion dollar BPO deal went to an IT services player and also that TCS was keen on acquiring the asset despite questions surrounding Citigroup's own financial stability, says the research firm in a press statement.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, a healthcare and life science specialist, picked up a 95 million dollar deal for clinical data management from Astra Zeneca, in what is seen as one of the biggest publicly announced deal in the KPO industry.

The revenue data also tells its own tale with Infosys growing its IT services revenue from 931.5 million dollars to 1101 million dollars between October-September 2007-08 while its BPO revenues grew from 53 million to 72 million dollars in the same period, which was almost double the growth in percentage terms over the IT growth.