Kolkata: The combined export earnings of the top 20 Indian BPO firms grew by 15% to touch $6.1 billion in the 2009-10 fiscal, according to a survey.

Though marginally lower than the growth of 17% achieved in the 2008-09 fiscal, export revenue of the top 20 BPO firms grew twice as fast as that of the top 20 IT firms, which witnessed an increase by 7.8% during the same period, according to the annual Dataquest Top 20 survey conducted by CyberMedia, South Asia’s largest speciality publisher.

Export revenue of the oldest BPO firm, Genpact, grew by 12% to Rs4,592 crore (excluding IT revenues), the survey report said. Genpact’s BPO business earned the maximum export revenue out of all the Indian BPO firms and was ranked No. 1 in the list.

The BPO division of TCS, ranked No. 2 by Dataquest, grew by a whopping 73% to Rs3,142 crore to close the gap with Genpact. The recent acquisition of Citigroup’s captive subsidiary by TCS drove the company’s high growth.

After TCS BPO, the other fastest growing companies were 3i InfoTech, which saw export revenue grow by 49% to Rs779 crore, Cognizant BPO (28% growth to Rs858 crore), Aegis BPO (23% to Rs1,919 crore) and 24/7 Customer (18% to Rs660 crore), it said.

Eleven of the Dataquest Top 20 BPO exports firms recorded double-digit growth, while four registered negative growth. The rest grew between 4-9%.