Power grid failure: How BPO companies coped

"The building infrastructure has dual back up support of gas and diesel. The critical and non-critical resources were put on optimum utilisation to control the wastage," WNS Group CEO Keshav R Murugesh said.

The Gurgaon delivery centre has not suffered any business loss, he added. WNS has a delivery centre in Gurgaon, which houses about 5,000 employees.

There was no impact of the power failure at Genpact either. Genpact is one of the country's largest BPO players and has 12,000 employees at its facilities in Delhi-NCR. Gurgaon is a hub for business process outsourcing (BPO) firms like Genpact, WNS, Convergys and EXL Service, which work 24/7 serving clients across geographies like the US, Europe and Australia.

Another BPO player Evalueserve also said it was business as usual at their premises. The company has 1,800 employees at its Gurgaon centre.

The Northern Grid, which caters to power supply in nine states and Union Territories -- Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Chandigarh -- collapsed at 2.35 AM today.

Almost entire Delhi went without power for about eight hours today following collapse of the grid severely affecting various services including Metro operation and train services. "The major shifts affected were the early morning shifts.

To support and sustain the operations, we also had back up of transport at various stations," Murugesh said. The BPO sector accounts for a major portion of the $100 billion IT-BPO industry in the country. While BPO exports are expected to reach $16 billion in FY2012, domestic revenue (excluding hardware) from the segment is forecast to reach Rs. 91,800 crore.