For three decades, India’s Business Process Management (BPM) sector has thrived as the world’s back office. But the rapid rise of ‘Agentic AI’—systems that independently plan, decide, and act—is forcing a massive structural pivot. According to Akshay Chhabra, Chairman and Managing Director of 1Point1 Solutions, this technological leap will not hollow out the workforce, but rather shift the industry from a cost-led, headcount-driven model to an outcome-led, intelligence-driven hub. Instead of running on a skeletal staff, the sector is creating deeper, better-paid roles that merge human judgment with machine efficiency. In this interview, Chhabra outlines the future of BPM hiring, India’s compounding advantage in services intelligence, and the dangerous complacency that could act as the sector’s biggest headwind.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
Q1. How will Agentic AI shape India’s BPM industry over the next five years?
Agentic AI will fundamentally shift India’s BPM industry from a cost-led, headcount-driven model to an outcome-led, intelligence-driven one. Unlike traditional automation, agentic systems can independently plan, decide and act, reducing dependence on manual workflows.
Over the next five years, this will drive three key changes. First, businesses will move from measuring effort to measuring outcomes — speed, accuracy and customer experience. Second, processes will become truly real-time, with agentic AI handling sentiment analysis, routing and resolution simultaneously rather than sequentially. Third, and most importantly, the industry will move from labour scalability to decision scalability — scaling intelligent agents instead of large teams.
This is a significant opportunity for India to reposition itself: not as the world’s back office, but as the global hub for autonomous, outcome-driven operations.
Q2. How do you see hiring trends in the BPM sector for the near-to-medium term? Will BPM eventually run on skeletal staff as AI adoption accelerates?
Hiring is being reshaped, not hollowed out. High-volume, rule-bound roles are steadily being absorbed by AI-led automation, and that trend will only accelerate. But demand is rising just as quickly for professionals who work alongside AI — people who can design processes in an agentic context, manage escalation pathways, read exception patterns, and make judgment calls in high-stakes situations. These roles are the future core of BPM operations.
A new layer of human functions is also growing in importance: auditors who validate AI decisions, interpreters who translate between business intent and machine behaviour, and system-accountants who own outcomes end to end. So no, I don’t see BPM running on skeletal staff. I see it running on a different staff — smaller in the repetitive layers, but deeper, better paid and more consequential in the judgment layers. The net effect is a shift in the talent pyramid, not its disappearance.
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Q3. What is the biggest headwind for India’s BPM industry? What is the strongest tailwind?
The biggest headwind is complacency dressed up as caution — a segment of the industry moving slowly on AI transformation simply because legacy models are still generating revenue. That comfort is dangerous, because the shift to outcome-led delivery won’t wait for anyone’s depreciation schedule.
The strongest tailwind is our compounding advantage in services intelligence. India has a generation of professionals who have grown up digitally native, working inside the world’s most complex processes across banking, insurance, healthcare and telecom. An AI system is only as good as the judgment, domain context and process design behind it — and that is precisely what India’s BPM industry has built over three decades. AI doesn’t erode that advantage; it amplifies it.
Q4. How has 1Point1 Solutions performed over the last year in terms of revenue growth and client acquisition?
FY26 has been a strong year by any measure — revenues and PAT alike. Q4 was particularly strong, with revenues up 35.5% year-on-year and 22.7% quarter-on-quarter. Beyond the headline numbers, the year was defined by deliberate strategic moves: our acquisition of Netcom Business Contact Centre, a three-year CX contract with Piramal Finance, and the launch of ResolX, our AI-first platform built around the Resolution-as-a-Service model.
What I’m particularly pleased about is the quality of our growth. Client engagement has moved to a higher level — ResolX already has seven live engagements and an active pipeline of proofs of concept. That tells me the market is buying outcomes, not just capacity.
Q5. What key business segments or verticals are currently driving your growth?
BFSI remains our strongest vertical, and the Netcom acquisition has significantly deepened it — both in India and now across Latin America. Banking clients in particular are engaging us on complex CX transformation mandates, not just basic service delivery. Our contract with Piramal Finance is a good example of the scale and tenure of these relationships.
Alongside BFSI, travel and mobility is an area of real momentum — a sector where interaction complexity is high and volumes are significant. Our third engine is digital-first enterprise clients, who typically want an accountable partner taking ownership of their entire CX architecture, from data extraction to resolution outcomes.
Q6. How is demand evolving for BPM and CX services in the current macroeconomic environment?
Counterintuitively, macroeconomic pressure is a demand catalyst for outcome-led BPM. With CFOs scrutinising every line item, the conversation shifts from “what does your team cost?” to “what are you actually delivering?”
What we’re seeing across client conversations is a growing urgency to consolidate. Enterprises that were juggling five or six fragmented automation tools now want integrated, accountable platforms that eliminate the software-service gap — where software is deployed but ownership of the actual outcome is unclear. That is precisely the gap ResolX is built to close.
Clients are also actively seeking multi-shore delivery, regulatory compliance, and the ability to scale without a proportional increase in headcount. Our global delivery model, strengthened by the Netcom acquisition, addresses exactly that. In short, the macro environment is pushing clients in the direction our business is designed to serve.
Q7. Are there specific geographies or industries where you see the strongest expansion potential for India’s BPM sector?
Latin America is the immediate opportunity — and frankly, one still underappreciated by the broader Indian BPM industry. Demand from North American clients for nearshore delivery that is bilingual, time-zone aligned and culturally proximate is growing fast. Our Netcom acquisition was designed specifically to capture that: clients in the US want the operational discipline and AI capabilities of an Indian BPM player, delivered from a geography that removes time-zone friction. That’s a powerful combination.
Beyond LATAM, the MENA region offers significant opportunity in BFSI and government services, where digital transformation mandates are backed by strong regulatory intent and capital. Southeast Asia is another market where demand for intelligent CX at scale is outpacing supply. Indian BPM players carry an inherent advantage into these markets — cost competitiveness, technological depth, and a track record of regulated-sector delivery.
On the industry side, healthcare offers perhaps the sharpest long-term growth for BPM globally. The complexity of patient interactions, claims management and compliance requirements creates a structural need for intelligent operations.
Q8. How is 1Point1 actually monetizing ‘Resolution-as-a-Service’ through ResolX? Are enterprise clients willing to pay a premium, or is it primarily an internal margin lever?
Honestly, both. ResolX is structured as an outcome-accountable model — we don’t charge clients for deploying software or for the number of agents on a program. We take ownership of the entire resolution architecture: the AI layer, the data extraction, the backend integration, and the outcome itself.
Enterprise clients are willing to pay a premium for that, because the alternative is spending on tools that don’t talk to each other, managed by vendors with no skin in the actual resolution game. The software-service gap is a real and costly problem for CX leaders, and closing it commands a premium. At the same time, ResolX materially improves our own economics — faster resolution means fewer agent hours per ticket, better utilisation and lower cost-to-serve. So it works as both a revenue premium and a margin lever, and that’s by design.
Q9. On the Netcom acquisition — how quickly will you deploy your AI stack across Netcom’s operations, and what is the projected timeline for revenue synergies?
We’ve already moved. ResolX has been successfully deployed for one of Netcom’s banking clients in Latin America, and that engagement is now our operational template for the wider rollout. From an integration standpoint, the priority has been to embed our Agentic AI capabilities into Netcom’s strongest vertical — BFSI — where both the demand signal and the regulatory discipline align with our existing depth. The bilingual delivery infrastructure across Costa Rica, Colombia and Panama is a strategic asset we’re activating specifically for North American clients who need nearshore delivery with AI-grade outcomes.
On revenue synergies, the acquisition is expected to nearly double our FY27 revenue trajectory. The earn-out structure, tied to EBITDA performance, keeps integration discipline and financial outcomes aligned.
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