The ultimate aim of any modern corporate is growth with profit maximization. Growth is the first and foremost characteristic of nature and its products which include modern societies with all their industrial, agricultural and service sectors and above all the research organizations to cater to the needs of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. Governed by the laws of the universe and nature, societies, markets and above all human life are in the constant churn of development in the realm of creativity and innovativeness.

We have always dreamt of leveraging technology to bridge the digital divide. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has involved the masses and has become the fastest growing industry in India. This influence had been limited to the larger cities till recently, but now global companies are breaking these boundaries and looking for talent in smaller `Tier-2' cities. The next step would be to take the BPO operations to the `real' India, i.e., to the rural parts of India. There lies an untapped potential for entrepreneurs willing to work in this field. This paper highlights the importance of this concept and the entrepreneurial initiatives in the field of Rural BPO.

Entrepreneurship is neither just small companies or start-ups nor unscrupulous promoters or for-profit firms; and it is certainly not about the `dotcoms' that came and went. Rather, it is a dynamic process of creating incremental wealth. This wealth is created by individuals who assume major risks in terms of equity, time and career commitment of providing value for some product or service. The entrepreneur must infuse value to the product or service to make it saleable. One of the working definitions of `entrepreneurship', given by Professor Howard Stevenson of Harvard Business School, is "the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control". One such opportunity that lies unexplored is in the field of Rural BPO.

Business process outsourcing is a long-term survival and growth strategy for big companies through which they contract routine `non-core' jobs to service providers who specialize in that function. Outsourcing, which was once viewed as a tool to reduce cost, is now being seen as a means to achieve better productivity, increased customer satisfaction, and entry into new markets. According to NASSCOM, over 50% of the Fortune 500 companies have incorporated offshore outsourcing into their strategies and around 80% of these now outsource to India. The services offered range from low-end back office processing to high-end budget and resource planning. India's $3.7 bn outsourcing industry, backed by its army of cheap, skilled, English-speaking personnel is expected to reach an annual turnover of $13.8 bn or nearly half of the global offshoring market by 2007. According to NASSCOM, the Indian BPO industry will grow at approximately 45% to US $5.7 bn in the current financial year.