Namas Bhojani for The New York Times Nishara Anthony (aka Naomi Morrison), left, and C.R. Suman (aka Susan Sanders) are all-American at work in Bangalore, India.
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ANGALORE, India, March 15 — With frosted glass and funky amber lights playing off the turquoise walls, the offices of Customer Asset look more like a Santa Fe diner than a telephone call center in southern India. The cultural vertigo is complete when employees introduce themselves to a visitor.

"Hi, my name is Susan Sanders, and I'm from Chicago," said C. R. Suman, 22, who is in fact a native of Bangalore and fields calls from customers of a telecommunications company in the United States.

Ms. Suman's fluent English and broad vowels would pass muster in the stands at Wrigley Field. In case her callers ask personal questions, Ms. Suman has conjured up a fictional American life, with parents Bob and Ann, brother Mark and a made-up business degree from the University of Illinois.

"We watch a lot of `Friends' and `Ally McBeal' to learn the right phrases," Ms. Suman said. "When people talk about their Bimmer, you have to know they mean a BMW."

"Or when they say `No way, José,' there is no José," added Ms. Suman's co-worker, Nishara Anthony, who goes by the name Naomi Morrison and, if asked, says she comes from Perth Amboy, N.J.

The point of this pretense is to convince Americans who dial toll- free numbers that the person on the other end of the line works right nearby — not 8,300 miles away, in a country where static- free calls used to be a novelty.

Call centers are a booming business in India, as companies like General Electric and British Airways set up supermarket-size phone banks to handle a daily barrage of customer inquiries. The companies value India for its widespread use of English and low-cost labor.

But call centers are only the low end of a much larger industry of Indian software developers, transcribers, accountants, Web site designers and animation artists who work on projects for foreign companies from Indian offices. By 2008, such assignments will generate 800,000 new jobs and $17 billion in revenue for India, according to the consultants McKinsey & Company.

"India is on its way to being the back office for the world," said Shriram Ramdas, one of the founders of Bangalore Labs, which manages Web sites and other information networks for companies from a futuristic office in the International Tech Park on the outskirts of Bangalore.

Doing back-office chores for advanced economies may not sound glamorous, especially for a nation that has created an $8 billion computer software industry virtually from scratch in the last decade. But it could spread the wealth of India's technology revolution beyond the pockets of prosperity that exist today in Bangalore, Hyderabad and a few other hubs of high technology.

"Right now, when you come to our campus, you're leaving India behind," said N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman of Infosys Technologies, one of India's most successful software companies and the first to be listed on Nasdaq. "We're living in a make-believe world."

With its putting green, aerobics studio, basketball court and even a deer park, the Infosys headquarters is a powerful symbol of what technology has brought to India since the late 1980's. Companies like Infosys and the rival Wipro Ltd. are deeply embedded in the microchips of dozens of the largest American businesses.