At the end of February, Firstsource announced ‘UnBPO’, which it describes as ‘a transformative shift away from traditional outsourcing models’. NelsonHall spoke with Firstsource CEO Ritesh Idnani and his executive team about this new approach, the drivers and challenges, and how far along Firstsource is on the roadmap.

Tech arbitrage is the new frontier

The ability to bring specific capabilities and integrate AI into them is replacing traditional labor arbitrage and delivery location dispersion. With the resurgence of economic nationalism, accelerating political, trade, and security risks, and the emergence of AI-augmented live agents, the onshore vs. offshore delivery models face systemic disruption.

Firstsource addresses these changes by rethinking the traditional role of business process outsourcing vendors. It aims to replace delivery sites with AI CoEs where BPS operations become more specialized and build expertise in horizontal or vertical AI-supported functions. It sees technology arbitrage as a form of leverage which it plans to bring closer to its core markets and in-country operations. One such example is in Derby, U.K., where Firstsource offers custom sales activities for target sectors such as media and telecom, and is now exploring sales for the U.S. market. The sales agents are trained using AI for non-linear training and are supported by agent assist tools for coaching and guiding sales.

Another example is in Melbourne, Australia, where Firstsource opened its AN&Z headquarters and AI Innovation Lab in March 2025. It currently employs ~120 people, and is looking to have 400 roles in the region over the next five years. The goal is to build solutions tailored to the Australian and New Zealand markets in telecom, financial services, energy, healthcare and retail while tapping into graduate talent from universities in the state of Victoria to co-innovate at the AI Innovation Lab.

Firstsource is using AI tools such as machine translation and accent softening to deliver borderless support. For example, it supports the German market from Hyderabad with real-time AI translation engines applied to text interactions provided by non-German speakers. The program has higher NPS compared to onshore work.

Fit-for-purpose technology contextualized by domain

As AI-first BPS becomes the predominant mode of operation, Firstsource aims to create very specific capabilities contextualized by sub-vertical and then show evidence of business results to clients. For example, in healthcare payer claims management, the company breaks down the process at the task level, and then decides on parts of the process suitable for agentic AI deployment. In edtech, it is assisting an education client in revamping its test scheduling, resulting in an FTE reduction from 40 to two.

The model of ‘service as a software’ blurs the lines between front, middle, and back-office but one key focus for Firstsource is bringing forward its domain knowledge and purposefully demonstrating to clients how agentic workflows could remodel their processes. The Firstsource UnBPO approach responds to this gradual convergence of front, middle, back-office parts of the org structures with software products by requiring a deep redesign of most existing processes and outsourcing relationships. Part of the re-imagination is deciding on the role of the human in the loop, whether the human is a full-time employee, part-time employee, or gig worker, and the requirements to create copilots. Then the final requirement is identifying and building skill sets in the labor force needed to be successful in this new environment, such as empathy-driven exception handling. For the edtech example, Firstsource solution architects had to identify the skillset and necessary copilots for the remaining human support.

Firstsource expects to start developing multipurpose, horizontal utility human agents who operate across verticals; for example, assisting customer scheduling in education and healthcare.

Serving as an orchestrator and distributor in an evolving tech ecosystem

For its technology ecosystem, Firstsource wants to be an orchestrator, including for startups specializing in vertical markets. For example, Firstsource works with an Austin startup addressing one use case in healthcare claims. In customer experience, it sees the opportunity in vertically-aligned solutions. An example technology partner focused exclusively on healthcare provider CX. For these startups, Firstsource wants to have a deeper relationship, to achieve greater integration of their solutions into Firstsource domain offerings. To accelerate the adoption of these tools, Firstsource mandates its solution architects to embed them in every proposal as a prerequisite.

To alleviate enterprise concerns and infosec hurdles in the adoption of startup tech, Firstsource stresses the benefits for the client and looks for opportunities to implement on top of existing infrastructure. One such example is Firstsource’s third-party accent neutralization platform which does not require integration with client systems and is implemented on the agent desktop. Another path for effective distribution is assisting clients that have already invested in emerging solutions to achieve ROI. One instance is a freight management client for which Firstsource helped utilize their existing purchase of automated QA within their operations.

Breaking down processes at the atomic level is a business thinking reset

Moving to this model of AI-productized and unbundled processes requires enterprise clients to redefine and break down their processes. It will also require organizations to change their procurement playbooks, adopt non-linear pricing structures, and integrate more closely with their outsourcing providers. Firstsource considers this a prerequisite for organizations to sustainably adapt to FLUX (fast, liquid, uncharted, and experimental) business environments.

Firstsource has implemented these design principles in collections by using a digital collector platform with ML/AI to achieve micro-segmentation and hyper-personalization of payment plans without human intervention. In healthcare payer, Firstsource has established several deals linked to a per member per month (PMPM) metric. The company expects more clients to adopt fixed-price models which stipulate payment clauses against delivered business outcomes.

An emerging question around commercial terms is how to price agentic workflows, and Firstsource’s plan is to offer more ‘service as a software’.

One of the keys for Firstsource in assisting clients on this business reimagination is identifying friction points in the customer journey as a starting point, including via mystery shopping exercises, to connect the dots between process atomization and technology + human intervention. The company plans to actively utilize its innovation studios, such as the one in central London, for this purpose. Firstsource expects its UnBPO approach to bring growth rates significantly higher than the industry average in 2025.