Thursday, July 21, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Cucumber Seller of Chenai
The cucumber seller of Chennai At peace with himself and with the world rushing past, this man was dressed in poverty. But in his presence, it was I who felt poor
SUBROTO BAGCHI
On a hot July day, my colleague Moses and I were trying to locate our car on Chennai’s Nungambakkam High Road in front of Nalli Silks when I saw a roadside cart laden with cucumbers. The seller was vacantly gazing at passersby. Clad in a white shirt and a dhoti worn in the traditional Chennai style, he had long hair and an unkempt beard. I did not know Tamil, and asked Moses to find out the price. One rupee apiece, came the reply.
We wanted one piece each. The cucumber seller began deftly slicing them to put salt and the delectable red chilly powder on the neat halves. As we bit into the cucumber, I asked Moses to tell him that his pricing was too low, and that he should raise it. Moses conveyed this. The seller shook his head, and replied that “customer satisfaction” is more important than extra profit. The words ‘customer satisfaction’ were in English. I gulped my patronising comment. At this time, Moses excused himself to find our car. After a few moments, the seller asked me in English where I was from. From Bangalore, I replied. What follows here is our conversation. His statements are highlighted.
Isn’t the Karnataka budget due to be presented tomorrow? Yes, that is true. Living in Karnataka,
it was easy for me to concur on this.
I wonder how the governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu will ever solve the water- sharing problem. Man cannot solve this problem. It has to be God. After all, it is an issue of how much rain is going to fall! I nodded. I was not sure if I had a view at all.
See the way the monsoon is progressing. It does not look good. The progress of the rains is leaving a ‘V’ of a dry patch as the clouds move north. Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and the states up north will have problems. Politicians are the ones who use such problems to create a divide among people. They always do it. They use water, religion, anything they can, to create a divide. Look at the way Amarinder Singh of Punjab is taking a stand. I looked at him,
in part admiration and part disbelief.
You’re from Bangalore. Things are going well for you folks. But I don’t understand how
people with shady business interests can become representatives of public opinion there.It
was part complaint and part observation.
At this point, a fellow peddler arrived — helped himself to some of the cucumber, and the two had a quick conversation on some issue I did not understand. After the other person left, I asked him if selling cucumber was his full-time vocation. He told me that right now it was. Earlier, he sold lottery tickets, the trading of which has since been banned. As a result he had to switch his business to selling cucumbers on the wheeled cart. No complaints and no issues. Meaning to engage him further, I asked him his religion. This drew an instant look of disappointment from him: “Sir, I am an Indian. That is my religion. In my eyes, all people are equal, and it does not matter to me at all.”
The clarity of his response and his conviction took me completely by surprise. His net worth was probably equal to his day’s turnover. The newspaper and magazines he reads, to keep abreast of things, wipe off the disposable income he generates. Bare feet on this busy, dusty road, he sold a low-value, perishable product from a rickety cart. At peace with himself and with the world rushing past, this man was dressed in poverty. But in his presence, it was I who felt poor.
We are not complete if we are not connected. It is only when we are connected that things make sense. Only when things make sense, we can form an opinion. Standing there, I wondered how many in the corporate world know who the chief minister of Punjab is, and about the progress of the monsoon! How many have an informed view on river water politics and budget proceedings of another state.
Soon, Moses appeared with our car. It was time for me to go. I shook hands with the nameless
cucumber seller of Chennai. Actually, I wanted to touch his feet
The Spirit of Kamatchi
A journey of a destitute, young mother that began in 1926 carries lessons in leadership and decision making Subroto Bagchi (Co-Founder Mindtree Consulting Inc.)Kamatchi was born in 1898 in Kattikulam - now in Tamil Nadu. Those were the days when a female child was raised with the sole purpose of getting her married off. So was Kamatchi. By stitching together subsequent events in her life, we gather that by the time she was twenty-five, she had five children from her husband, Thalakaswami. He did not care much for her, and one day just went away.The eldest daughter was all of twelve and the youngest was two and a half years old when Kamatchi decided to take charge. We do not know how but she left Kattikulam and finally landed up in Madras in a state of destitution. She looked for work - not an easy thing in 1926. Around the same time, there were recruitment agents looking for rubber plantation workers for British clients. Kamatchi signed up and sat in a sailboat with the five children in tow, and arrived at a rubber plantation to become a 'tapper'. As Kamatchi went to work, the oldest daughter took up the task of mothering the other four. Two of these were the in-between sons who started going to school. Kamatchi and her brood braved on under a hutment of a swampy rubber estate until 1945. Then came the Japanese, and took away the two boys as slaves to build the bridge over the river Kwai in Burma. This was called the 'death railway' because people seldom returned, falling to the rampant bouts of cholera, typhoid and malaria.The war was over and the Japanese retreated, but Kamatchi's little boy never came back. The older son somehow did and went on to complete his higher education, eventually becoming a headmaster. On his return, he took complete charge of the surviving siblings, and asked Kamatchi to retire. In 1966, she passed away, a single mother - leaving behind her legacy in Malaysia, a country with the highest number of people of Indian origin. Kamatchi's son, in turn, carried on her lineage. One of his sons, Dr Vignesh, was narrating this fascinating story of courage as he was driving me to the venue of the Malaysian-Indian Economic Summit in Kuala Lumpur.He grew up to qualify as a veterinary practitioner. All his siblings are in the mainstream of Malaysian society today. I asked him about his recollections of Kamatchi. When Dr Vignesh was a boy, Kamatchi's sunset years had begun. Life in the rubber estates had left her an asthmatic. But she remained until her last, the matriarch who was a go-getter, who knew no fear, a motivator and a fighter. Though she believed in God, she was non-ritualistic and exhorted her children to rely on self-help. She used to say: "You have to take charge; God does not come through the tin roof to dole out bounties."We study leadership and decision-making in business - a subject that fascinates us. We debate if leaders create circumstances or vice versa. We talk about decisions and momentous ones, with the power to create generational impact. In all this, we analyse character in leadership, and use analogies from political history and military conquests because business leadership hasn't been in existence long enough to create narratives with directional value.My mind goes back to 1926. I see a twenty-five year old, illiterate woman - nah, girl. She is with five children; the youngest by her bosom. Six human frames and a small bundle of cloth, representing her departure from the past. What would have happened if Kamatchi had stayed on in Kattikulam, bemoaning the runaway husband and seeking the alms and mercy of village elders? What would have happened if she had killed her children and herself? What if she had abandoned them? I shudder and seek solace in the miracle of now.In all this, what was the most important decision that Kamatchi took? For me, it was the one to dislocate herself from Kattikulam. That single decision changed the fate of three generations. It was the potently unsafe option. Kamatchi did not go to business school but lived the saying that 'the safest place for a ship is the harbour'. But it was never built to stay there.
Ek Chup Sau Sukh
Jalsa , Mumbai July 9, 2011 Sat 11 : 27 PM
Its not what has been taken away from you that counts - its what you do with what is left that matters. The exact quote was from Hubert Humphrey, but it was relevant even in its broken form and hence its mention …
Much can get taken away from you. It must. Life would be worthless if we were to only receive and not give away. But getting left behind with whatever there is and to make life worthy and alive is what makes us worthy. We are born with some perfections and some disabilities and soon enough we realize our areas of incompetence. There are many that lament the imperfections, annoy their minds on the misfortunes, look upon others that possess more with envy and jealousy. But does it bring any result. No. They destroy themselves by continuous remark on their negativity and end up as traumatic wrecks. Consolation comes to them when they enhance themselves through substance abuse and other unnatural devices ; elevating themselves momentarily from the morass of their own building.
They are weak that resort to practices that consume rather than deliver. I may never ever deliver, but neither would I be entirely consumed with the burden of imperfections. I would strongly admit, rather than cover and disguise. I would let it be seen and shown rather than be hidden and unknown. There will descend an element of self consciousness when we do that. But better to be self conscious than to allow the other to fester and wound inside. What does one achieve by glamorizing the achievements we encounter. I would rather it lay dormant within and allow it to breathe on its own. Occasions such as this stand better chance for eventual recognition. Manufacturing competence, visibility, awareness, recognition, achievement, would take me a lifetime to reconcile with and some more -
‘Ek chup sau sukh’ !! the elders advise through generations. One silence, a hundred joys. If it has to come your way it shall find a path of its own. If not no matter how hard one may try, it shall never make an appearance. I believe valued recognition can never be led astray through manipulation and craft. Momentarily yes, the odds shall favor against you, but eventual victory shall always be yours. It is a test of patience, of forbearance, of reserves of fortitude and strength of character. When ever then was life ever going to be without these elements.
These are not just philosophical musings. They are practiced law, as it were, ready to be judged by the severest benches of judiciary.
I example myself in all matters before putting it out for public consumption. And only when I find them to be of practical use, do I share them. I am no standard of example and certainly not the best, but do find myself in positions at times where this propensity can be applied. Through the years of living and life there is but one common belief for me. Do it and leave it ! If it has to grow it shall, on its own strength of root. If not, torrents of rain water and nurturing shall not bring effect.
Better to believe that you have been wronged and keep it within. Better. When declared outside, it shall invite severe and cynical criticism and remorse. Be prepared for that, or do not allow yourself to enter that realm. Harboring hate and revenge destroys our own body and may never get a chance to destroy the other. What then ? Living with the thought of constant vigil on where and what and how the other behaved, is using up a great deal of your brain and mind consciousness, preventing it from other more deserving thought.
And then … what good does it eventually make … you are wronged, you fester the wound and at the first opportunity resolve it by utilizing the same method of technology that was used against you, in defense. But does it actually resolve ? I would guarantee not.
We are here to accomplish our tasks as have been stipulated to us, by our own deserving and accumen. Stick to it. What good if you shall lead a tributary away from the main to square matters. You would need to look after the main river and now, the tributary. Does that not increase the volume of your horizon ..? Does it not add, rather than subtract. Does it not build slush and mud on an otherwise clear and efficient pathway. Would we rather have this than that ??
I leave it to your discretion …
Amitabh Bachchan
Posted in: Others
Its not what has been taken away from you that counts - its what you do with what is left that matters. The exact quote was from Hubert Humphrey, but it was relevant even in its broken form and hence its mention …
Much can get taken away from you. It must. Life would be worthless if we were to only receive and not give away. But getting left behind with whatever there is and to make life worthy and alive is what makes us worthy. We are born with some perfections and some disabilities and soon enough we realize our areas of incompetence. There are many that lament the imperfections, annoy their minds on the misfortunes, look upon others that possess more with envy and jealousy. But does it bring any result. No. They destroy themselves by continuous remark on their negativity and end up as traumatic wrecks. Consolation comes to them when they enhance themselves through substance abuse and other unnatural devices ; elevating themselves momentarily from the morass of their own building.
They are weak that resort to practices that consume rather than deliver. I may never ever deliver, but neither would I be entirely consumed with the burden of imperfections. I would strongly admit, rather than cover and disguise. I would let it be seen and shown rather than be hidden and unknown. There will descend an element of self consciousness when we do that. But better to be self conscious than to allow the other to fester and wound inside. What does one achieve by glamorizing the achievements we encounter. I would rather it lay dormant within and allow it to breathe on its own. Occasions such as this stand better chance for eventual recognition. Manufacturing competence, visibility, awareness, recognition, achievement, would take me a lifetime to reconcile with and some more -
‘Ek chup sau sukh’ !! the elders advise through generations. One silence, a hundred joys. If it has to come your way it shall find a path of its own. If not no matter how hard one may try, it shall never make an appearance. I believe valued recognition can never be led astray through manipulation and craft. Momentarily yes, the odds shall favor against you, but eventual victory shall always be yours. It is a test of patience, of forbearance, of reserves of fortitude and strength of character. When ever then was life ever going to be without these elements.
These are not just philosophical musings. They are practiced law, as it were, ready to be judged by the severest benches of judiciary.
I example myself in all matters before putting it out for public consumption. And only when I find them to be of practical use, do I share them. I am no standard of example and certainly not the best, but do find myself in positions at times where this propensity can be applied. Through the years of living and life there is but one common belief for me. Do it and leave it ! If it has to grow it shall, on its own strength of root. If not, torrents of rain water and nurturing shall not bring effect.
Better to believe that you have been wronged and keep it within. Better. When declared outside, it shall invite severe and cynical criticism and remorse. Be prepared for that, or do not allow yourself to enter that realm. Harboring hate and revenge destroys our own body and may never get a chance to destroy the other. What then ? Living with the thought of constant vigil on where and what and how the other behaved, is using up a great deal of your brain and mind consciousness, preventing it from other more deserving thought.
And then … what good does it eventually make … you are wronged, you fester the wound and at the first opportunity resolve it by utilizing the same method of technology that was used against you, in defense. But does it actually resolve ? I would guarantee not.
We are here to accomplish our tasks as have been stipulated to us, by our own deserving and accumen. Stick to it. What good if you shall lead a tributary away from the main to square matters. You would need to look after the main river and now, the tributary. Does that not increase the volume of your horizon ..? Does it not add, rather than subtract. Does it not build slush and mud on an otherwise clear and efficient pathway. Would we rather have this than that ??
I leave it to your discretion …
Amitabh Bachchan
Posted in: Others
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Distance Education article in Indiatoday
Going the Distance
Prachi Rege | October 9, 2010 | Updated 00:00 IST
The Internet plays a key role in distance learning.Million-dollar salary packages are no longer just for full-time MBA graduates from the top B-schools in the country. For graduates, mid-career professionals and executives who couldn't pursue higher studies due to time or money constraints, a distance learning MBA programme is the answer. The important fact is that the industry is interested in hiring a distance learning MBA graduate. Like in the case of Upasana Mukherjee, a graduate in English, who was working as a technical writer with IBM in Kolkata. Mukherjee wanted to make a career in the instructional designing industry, so she decided to do a postgraduate diploma in instructional design from the Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning (SCDL). After completing the programme she secured a placement with Wipro Technologies, Pune, as an instructional designer with a 50 per cent salary hike.
Chinmay Kamat, 32, Pune
Institute: Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research
Subject: Postgraduate Diploma in International Business
Reason for doing this course: Wanted to start his own business venture
Previously employed: With KPIT Cummins, Pune, for over three years
What now: While pursing this course, Kamat was working. After earning his diploma, he quit his job in August and has successfully set up his own venture called Finesse Learning-a soft skills and leadership training consultancy.
Distance learning programmes are viewed as not only a career enhancement option for working professionals but are also a retention tool for companies. Some companies sponsor or encourage their employees to pursue such programmes. "A distance learning MBA graduate possesses the ability to multi-task, stay committed, work hard and be patient," explains Arvind Agrawal, president and chief executive-corporate development, HR, RPG Enterprises.
Every year RPG encourages at least five to six employees to join the postgraduate diploma in business administration course offered by Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai. Though this doesn't mean that these employees get promoted immediately; what matters is they earn the required expertise and skills for the job, explains Agrawal. "Pursuing this degree makes an employee's career growth more progressive as they have a more wholesome and holistic picture of the business world," says Vidushi Soneja, HR executive, Ericsson India.
NMIMS offers customised programmes specially designed according to the needs of the company. "We trained 20 employees from Accenture through a postgraduate diploma in finance management," says Dr Vidya Naik, associate dean, School of Distance Learning, NMIMS. Graduates from Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (LNWIMDR), Mumbai, are given placements by companies like Mahindra & Mahindra, L&T, Reserve Bank of India, IBM India, Raymonds Ltd and HPCL. Graduates from SCDL have been placed with companies like Wipro Learning Centre, Wipro BPO, Rubikube, iThink Solutions, Resource Plus Services, NIIT Ayush Software and Stylus Systems. Students at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, are offered placements by Infosys, Genpact, Royal Bank of Scotland, Aditya Birla Group, Hindalco and ONGC.
Distance learning programmes aren't a new phenomenon but institutes have finally given a shape to the courses. Most institutes have a core team comprising in-house professors. "The faculty for full-time courses trains distance learning students. As learning can happen over the Internet, industry professionals and professors from around the globe can give lectures online," says Arun Mohan Sherry, director, IMT Centre for Distance Learning. While such a programme costs from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 15 lakh for two years, a distance learning course costs between Rs 20,000 and Rs 60,000 for the same. "In this module the expenditure is only on the technology used," says Uday Salunkhe, director, LNWIMDR.
Upasana Mukherjee, 27, Pune
Institute: Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning
Subject: Postgraduate Diploma in Instructional Design
Reason for doing this course: Wanted to combine her language skills with technical ones and work as an instructional designer
Previously employed: With IBM, Kolkata, for one year
What now: Mukherjee was previously employed as a technical writer at IBM. After completing her course she secured placement with Wipro Technologies, Pune, as an instructional designer with a 50 per cent salary hike.
Study material consists of audio CDs that have PowerPoint presentation on each subjects with a detailed explanation of every chapter. Some institutes also give reference books. These are delivered right to one's doorstep. With case studies to analyse and assignments to submit, these courses are as exhaustive as full-time courses.
"We try to maintain parity with the full-time programme so that those pursuing it are also intensively trained," says Naik. The first-year curriculum covers a mix of subjects like organisational behaviour, marketing management, financial accounting, consumer behaviour and business economics. In the second year, one has to choose a specialisation. Though there are no entrance tests for these courses, mid-term and semester exams are conducted online.
The Internet has become a key space for communication between the professor and students. "Virtual classrooms allow students to see and hear the lecturer, ask questions and even replay a lecture. This creates a sophisticated learning experience similar to a live classroom session," says
Swati Mujumdar, director, SCDL. Students and professors can also chat online to discuss problems. "Our virtual classroom sessions are decided well in advance-twice a week in the evening for two hours. During the time of admission, students are given the schedule for the whole of two years," says Salunkhe. Students based in the same city as the institute have the option of attending personal contact programmes, which take place on weekends.
Some institutes offer admissions twice a year, while others accept students four times a year. There has been a rise in the number of people joining these courses. It's not just the mid-level executives who are pursuing them but also fresh graduates who opt for jobs instead of higher education. "SCDL has seen a rise: 8,000 students in 2001 to about 53,000 in 2009," says Mujumdar. NMIMS has from 2,000 to 5,000 students joining every year.
--Rs 60,000 is what an MBA course by distance learning costs while a full-time MBA diploma at IMT costs about Rs 8 lakh.
--53,000 students joined distance learning courses at SCDL in 2009, up from the 8,000 that were enlisted in 2001.
According to experts, the disadvantage of such a programme is that students can't experience the physical presence of peers and professors which would motivate them. "Distance education requires self-motivation. Opting out of the course, following a bad score in a mid-term test is not the solution. Students need to be focused in order to complete the degree," says Salunkhe. As they say: No pain, no gain; clubbed with determination, is a sure-shot win for the candidate.
Institutes of Note
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai and Bangalore
Courses: Postgraduate Diploma in Finance, Business Management, HR, International Trade, Supply Chain Management and Banking
Fee: Rs 50,000 for two years
Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai
Courses: Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing Management, Finance, HR, E-Business, Retail Management, International Business and Banking and Investment and Insurance
Fee: Rs 45,000 for two years
Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning, Pune
Courses: Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration, Instructional Design, Marketing Management, HR, customer relationship management, Finance and Operations Management
Fee: Rs 25,000 for two years
XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur
Courses: Business Management, HR, Logistics and Supply Chain Management and Sales and Marketing Management
Fee: Rs 1,75,000 onward for a year
Amity School of Distance Learning, Delhi
Courses: HR, IT, Marketing, International Business, Finance, Operations and Insurance
Fee: With Personal Contact Programme Rs 57,000; otherwise Rs 42,000; for two years for graduates, three for professionals
Amity Center for E-Learning
Courses: Production, HR, IT Marketing, International Business and Finance
Fee: Rs 59,000 for MBA-three years, MBA (EFT)-two years, MBA (CAFT)-1.6 years
Prachi Rege | October 9, 2010 | Updated 00:00 IST
The Internet plays a key role in distance learning.Million-dollar salary packages are no longer just for full-time MBA graduates from the top B-schools in the country. For graduates, mid-career professionals and executives who couldn't pursue higher studies due to time or money constraints, a distance learning MBA programme is the answer. The important fact is that the industry is interested in hiring a distance learning MBA graduate. Like in the case of Upasana Mukherjee, a graduate in English, who was working as a technical writer with IBM in Kolkata. Mukherjee wanted to make a career in the instructional designing industry, so she decided to do a postgraduate diploma in instructional design from the Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning (SCDL). After completing the programme she secured a placement with Wipro Technologies, Pune, as an instructional designer with a 50 per cent salary hike.
Chinmay Kamat, 32, Pune
Institute: Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research
Subject: Postgraduate Diploma in International Business
Reason for doing this course: Wanted to start his own business venture
Previously employed: With KPIT Cummins, Pune, for over three years
What now: While pursing this course, Kamat was working. After earning his diploma, he quit his job in August and has successfully set up his own venture called Finesse Learning-a soft skills and leadership training consultancy.
Distance learning programmes are viewed as not only a career enhancement option for working professionals but are also a retention tool for companies. Some companies sponsor or encourage their employees to pursue such programmes. "A distance learning MBA graduate possesses the ability to multi-task, stay committed, work hard and be patient," explains Arvind Agrawal, president and chief executive-corporate development, HR, RPG Enterprises.
Every year RPG encourages at least five to six employees to join the postgraduate diploma in business administration course offered by Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai. Though this doesn't mean that these employees get promoted immediately; what matters is they earn the required expertise and skills for the job, explains Agrawal. "Pursuing this degree makes an employee's career growth more progressive as they have a more wholesome and holistic picture of the business world," says Vidushi Soneja, HR executive, Ericsson India.
NMIMS offers customised programmes specially designed according to the needs of the company. "We trained 20 employees from Accenture through a postgraduate diploma in finance management," says Dr Vidya Naik, associate dean, School of Distance Learning, NMIMS. Graduates from Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (LNWIMDR), Mumbai, are given placements by companies like Mahindra & Mahindra, L&T, Reserve Bank of India, IBM India, Raymonds Ltd and HPCL. Graduates from SCDL have been placed with companies like Wipro Learning Centre, Wipro BPO, Rubikube, iThink Solutions, Resource Plus Services, NIIT Ayush Software and Stylus Systems. Students at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, are offered placements by Infosys, Genpact, Royal Bank of Scotland, Aditya Birla Group, Hindalco and ONGC.
Distance learning programmes aren't a new phenomenon but institutes have finally given a shape to the courses. Most institutes have a core team comprising in-house professors. "The faculty for full-time courses trains distance learning students. As learning can happen over the Internet, industry professionals and professors from around the globe can give lectures online," says Arun Mohan Sherry, director, IMT Centre for Distance Learning. While such a programme costs from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 15 lakh for two years, a distance learning course costs between Rs 20,000 and Rs 60,000 for the same. "In this module the expenditure is only on the technology used," says Uday Salunkhe, director, LNWIMDR.
Upasana Mukherjee, 27, Pune
Institute: Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning
Subject: Postgraduate Diploma in Instructional Design
Reason for doing this course: Wanted to combine her language skills with technical ones and work as an instructional designer
Previously employed: With IBM, Kolkata, for one year
What now: Mukherjee was previously employed as a technical writer at IBM. After completing her course she secured placement with Wipro Technologies, Pune, as an instructional designer with a 50 per cent salary hike.
Study material consists of audio CDs that have PowerPoint presentation on each subjects with a detailed explanation of every chapter. Some institutes also give reference books. These are delivered right to one's doorstep. With case studies to analyse and assignments to submit, these courses are as exhaustive as full-time courses.
"We try to maintain parity with the full-time programme so that those pursuing it are also intensively trained," says Naik. The first-year curriculum covers a mix of subjects like organisational behaviour, marketing management, financial accounting, consumer behaviour and business economics. In the second year, one has to choose a specialisation. Though there are no entrance tests for these courses, mid-term and semester exams are conducted online.
The Internet has become a key space for communication between the professor and students. "Virtual classrooms allow students to see and hear the lecturer, ask questions and even replay a lecture. This creates a sophisticated learning experience similar to a live classroom session," says
Swati Mujumdar, director, SCDL. Students and professors can also chat online to discuss problems. "Our virtual classroom sessions are decided well in advance-twice a week in the evening for two hours. During the time of admission, students are given the schedule for the whole of two years," says Salunkhe. Students based in the same city as the institute have the option of attending personal contact programmes, which take place on weekends.
Some institutes offer admissions twice a year, while others accept students four times a year. There has been a rise in the number of people joining these courses. It's not just the mid-level executives who are pursuing them but also fresh graduates who opt for jobs instead of higher education. "SCDL has seen a rise: 8,000 students in 2001 to about 53,000 in 2009," says Mujumdar. NMIMS has from 2,000 to 5,000 students joining every year.
--Rs 60,000 is what an MBA course by distance learning costs while a full-time MBA diploma at IMT costs about Rs 8 lakh.
--53,000 students joined distance learning courses at SCDL in 2009, up from the 8,000 that were enlisted in 2001.
According to experts, the disadvantage of such a programme is that students can't experience the physical presence of peers and professors which would motivate them. "Distance education requires self-motivation. Opting out of the course, following a bad score in a mid-term test is not the solution. Students need to be focused in order to complete the degree," says Salunkhe. As they say: No pain, no gain; clubbed with determination, is a sure-shot win for the candidate.
Institutes of Note
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai and Bangalore
Courses: Postgraduate Diploma in Finance, Business Management, HR, International Trade, Supply Chain Management and Banking
Fee: Rs 50,000 for two years
Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai
Courses: Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing Management, Finance, HR, E-Business, Retail Management, International Business and Banking and Investment and Insurance
Fee: Rs 45,000 for two years
Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning, Pune
Courses: Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration, Instructional Design, Marketing Management, HR, customer relationship management, Finance and Operations Management
Fee: Rs 25,000 for two years
XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur
Courses: Business Management, HR, Logistics and Supply Chain Management and Sales and Marketing Management
Fee: Rs 1,75,000 onward for a year
Amity School of Distance Learning, Delhi
Courses: HR, IT, Marketing, International Business, Finance, Operations and Insurance
Fee: With Personal Contact Programme Rs 57,000; otherwise Rs 42,000; for two years for graduates, three for professionals
Amity Center for E-Learning
Courses: Production, HR, IT Marketing, International Business and Finance
Fee: Rs 59,000 for MBA-three years, MBA (EFT)-two years, MBA (CAFT)-1.6 years
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Swami Vivekanada
Vivekananda: My teen icon wore saffron
Anshul Chaturvedi
08 January 2011, 11:09 PM IST
Long, long ago, I, too – unlikely as it may seem with the graying hair today – was once a teenaged rebel. Defiant, stubborn, questioning, a risk-taker, even reckless. Some of those traits I have, hopefully, retained. But the instigator of my transition from a seemingly inconspicuous docile schoolboy to this combative version was neither my college gang nor a rapper with an exotic name. It was a man long dead, having lived all of 39 years, speaking to me through fiery words that did not diminish in intensity with the passage of time.
I picked up Vivekananda’s thoughts one day in class XIIth, and have not quite been able to put them down yet. Having the capability to live only a little of what he practiced, I cannot lay claim to being Eklavya to his Dronacharya status. Yet, when I was beginning to decipher the questions of right and wrong, moral and immoral, he summed it up for me the complexity of it all: ‘Fear is the greatest sin my religion teaches’. Since then, I’ve tried to ensure that I did not commit the cardinal sin, whatever other errors I make.
In childhood, I learnt, as we all do, that convention and what everyone else thought mattered. Then I unlearnt it. “I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world”, the monk thundered though the years into my mindspace, and is it any wonder that I was often more of a nonconformist than anyone with a dozen tattoos, eyebrow piercings and purple hair colour could have been?
When I was at my most despondent, wondering whom to turn to for help, unsure of receiving it from anywhere, I recalled the man who wrote “Human help I spurn with my foot. He who has been with me through hills and dales, through deserts and forests, will be with me, I hope; if not, some heroic soul would arise some time or other, far abler than myself, and carry it out.” I learnt to not despair for human help and reconcile to the fact that either He would chart out my survival or declare and end to my tenure here.
When I started out an inconsequential career in the back of beyond, I sometimes wondered what I was doing, whether it was all that I was worth. Vivekanda told me – “Do not be afraid of small beginnings, great things come afterwards. Be courageous.” I learnt not to despair at small beginnings and have the courage of great things to follow them.
When I faced flak, I remembered the monk writing to his boys: ‘Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you – no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven – but stand up and work!” He almost read my mind and explained in his fiery fashion: “the names of those who will wish to injure us will be legion. But is not that the surest sign of our having the truth? The more I have been opposed, the more my energy has always found expression.” And I stood up and worked, irrespective of the disapproval of puppies and the heavens alike. And learnt to no longer cringe at those wishing to injure. And lived to tell the tale – so far!
When I faced slander and innuendo, my first reactions were hypersensitive. I itched to get even. Then I went back to the monk who was not spared when in the US by critics questioning his way of life there. And his response: “Tell my friends that a uniform silence is all my answer to my detractors. If I give them tit for tat, it would bring me down to a level with them. Tell them that truth will take care of itself…” I learnt to not respond and to believe that facts would take care of themselves.
When I wistfully looked at the twenties go by in 12-hour work days and struggle and little else, when I looked around and wondered why I had neither money nor fame and whether my nonconformity was worth anything, Vivekananda told me to wait. Wait, he said, “wait, money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning. It is love that pays; it is character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties.” I looked back at the worst points of my life, saw for myself whether I lasted through them because I kept the backbone straight or because I had clout or cash, got my answer, and told myself not to forget it thence.
When the instinct to do earth-shattering things egged me on, only to be killed with one look at my dismal bank balance, I asked him for answers, and he told me: “Was it ever in the history of the world that any great work was done by the rich? It is the heart and the brain that do it ever and not the purse.” I stopped assuming that I was incapable of great work if my purse was empty.
It has now been many years of long hours and busy schedules, and sometimes one wants to simply be quiet and put thoughts into words, but time is scarce in the pursuit of the daily bread. But then one recalls the monk, even in his situation in life, writing to Sister Nivedita: “I was born for the life of a scholar – retired, quiet, poring over my books. But the mother dispenses otherwise – yet that tendency is there.” And for a moment my master and me are kindred spirits, joined in a thought across a century.
And as I chart the journey of what years I have lived, and what years – who knows how many – are left, every single time I face something that makes me falter, ponder, slow down, I go back to my gurumantra, words of Vivekananda that are etched in my mind from that day when I first read them as a 17-year old: “This I have seen in life – he who is over-cautious about himself falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honour and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss, always loses…”
When Vivekananda taught that to a 17-year-old, he gave him freedom from fear, he made him the ultimate teenaged rebel. Except that, unlike the tattoos, the piercings or the punk cuts, you never outgrow this rebel instinct.
You gifted me the ability to stay in my mind forever 17. Happy birthday, Naren!
------
Anshul Chaturvedi
08 January 2011, 11:09 PM IST
Long, long ago, I, too – unlikely as it may seem with the graying hair today – was once a teenaged rebel. Defiant, stubborn, questioning, a risk-taker, even reckless. Some of those traits I have, hopefully, retained. But the instigator of my transition from a seemingly inconspicuous docile schoolboy to this combative version was neither my college gang nor a rapper with an exotic name. It was a man long dead, having lived all of 39 years, speaking to me through fiery words that did not diminish in intensity with the passage of time.
I picked up Vivekananda’s thoughts one day in class XIIth, and have not quite been able to put them down yet. Having the capability to live only a little of what he practiced, I cannot lay claim to being Eklavya to his Dronacharya status. Yet, when I was beginning to decipher the questions of right and wrong, moral and immoral, he summed it up for me the complexity of it all: ‘Fear is the greatest sin my religion teaches’. Since then, I’ve tried to ensure that I did not commit the cardinal sin, whatever other errors I make.
In childhood, I learnt, as we all do, that convention and what everyone else thought mattered. Then I unlearnt it. “I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world”, the monk thundered though the years into my mindspace, and is it any wonder that I was often more of a nonconformist than anyone with a dozen tattoos, eyebrow piercings and purple hair colour could have been?
When I was at my most despondent, wondering whom to turn to for help, unsure of receiving it from anywhere, I recalled the man who wrote “Human help I spurn with my foot. He who has been with me through hills and dales, through deserts and forests, will be with me, I hope; if not, some heroic soul would arise some time or other, far abler than myself, and carry it out.” I learnt to not despair for human help and reconcile to the fact that either He would chart out my survival or declare and end to my tenure here.
When I started out an inconsequential career in the back of beyond, I sometimes wondered what I was doing, whether it was all that I was worth. Vivekanda told me – “Do not be afraid of small beginnings, great things come afterwards. Be courageous.” I learnt not to despair at small beginnings and have the courage of great things to follow them.
When I faced flak, I remembered the monk writing to his boys: ‘Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you – no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven – but stand up and work!” He almost read my mind and explained in his fiery fashion: “the names of those who will wish to injure us will be legion. But is not that the surest sign of our having the truth? The more I have been opposed, the more my energy has always found expression.” And I stood up and worked, irrespective of the disapproval of puppies and the heavens alike. And learnt to no longer cringe at those wishing to injure. And lived to tell the tale – so far!
When I faced slander and innuendo, my first reactions were hypersensitive. I itched to get even. Then I went back to the monk who was not spared when in the US by critics questioning his way of life there. And his response: “Tell my friends that a uniform silence is all my answer to my detractors. If I give them tit for tat, it would bring me down to a level with them. Tell them that truth will take care of itself…” I learnt to not respond and to believe that facts would take care of themselves.
When I wistfully looked at the twenties go by in 12-hour work days and struggle and little else, when I looked around and wondered why I had neither money nor fame and whether my nonconformity was worth anything, Vivekananda told me to wait. Wait, he said, “wait, money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning. It is love that pays; it is character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties.” I looked back at the worst points of my life, saw for myself whether I lasted through them because I kept the backbone straight or because I had clout or cash, got my answer, and told myself not to forget it thence.
When the instinct to do earth-shattering things egged me on, only to be killed with one look at my dismal bank balance, I asked him for answers, and he told me: “Was it ever in the history of the world that any great work was done by the rich? It is the heart and the brain that do it ever and not the purse.” I stopped assuming that I was incapable of great work if my purse was empty.
It has now been many years of long hours and busy schedules, and sometimes one wants to simply be quiet and put thoughts into words, but time is scarce in the pursuit of the daily bread. But then one recalls the monk, even in his situation in life, writing to Sister Nivedita: “I was born for the life of a scholar – retired, quiet, poring over my books. But the mother dispenses otherwise – yet that tendency is there.” And for a moment my master and me are kindred spirits, joined in a thought across a century.
And as I chart the journey of what years I have lived, and what years – who knows how many – are left, every single time I face something that makes me falter, ponder, slow down, I go back to my gurumantra, words of Vivekananda that are etched in my mind from that day when I first read them as a 17-year old: “This I have seen in life – he who is over-cautious about himself falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honour and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss, always loses…”
When Vivekananda taught that to a 17-year-old, he gave him freedom from fear, he made him the ultimate teenaged rebel. Except that, unlike the tattoos, the piercings or the punk cuts, you never outgrow this rebel instinct.
You gifted me the ability to stay in my mind forever 17. Happy birthday, Naren!
------
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Laid off? Arise, awake & stop not
Organisations, post the global recession, have become very sensitive to costs. In most, the line “Staff Costs” is one of the largest controllable lines and invariably comes into focus, particularly when there are profitability challenges or leadership changes at the helm.
Some call it redeployment, a few refer to it as realignment and many just restructuring. But there is one thing, which for sure accompanies any attempt at tweaking the organisation to achieve better efficiencies on the money spent on the “staff costs” line, and that is grief and uncertainty for the employees who are impacted. Invariably it leads to loss of jobs and the obvious loss of self-esteem for those affected. How does one deal with such situations, were they to arise?
First and foremost, if you are the impacted party, it is important to realise that such instances are not because of you. If any organisation decides to go in for a restructuring, it’s more an overall structural decision and often not based on individual skill sets. It is not of your doing. It is just that you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has little to do with your competencies or performance. That said, it makes sense to realise the writing on the wall and plan your future course of action.
“You just need to be realistic and cognizant of the fact that you quickly need an alternate employment. Look out for jobs outside the company. The market is large and opportunities aplenty”, says Meenakshi Reddy, a banking professional who recently lost her job to an organisational realignment.
Many times restructuring is accompanied by offers of alternate placement within the same organisation and internal job ads. But invariably these offers are more of a whitewash to ensure that the job losses do not come into public domain. “We have more jobs available within the organisation than the number of people rendered jobless by this exercise,” is a better press statement to make. “Do not restrict yourself to jobs within the organisation that you work for,” she adds.
“Do not bullshit about the reason why you are looking for a job? In an interview, there is nothing shameful in telling the interviewer, ‘My organisation decided to downsize and so I am looking for a job’. People tend to appreciate this honesty as against beating around the bush,” cautions the CEO of an NBFC who didn’t wan’t to be named. This just reinforces the fact that the Indian corporate culture has adapted itself to the world littered with pink slips. It may also be time to consider options and maybe even give wing to your entrepreneurial dreams, in case you have any. Put the separation money you get from the organisation to good use.
To people impacted by this, my advice would be to prevent negativity from creeping in. Remain positive. If you get into a negative mindset, it sends your confidence into a downward spiral, which will impact your ability to crack interviews outside. Avoid people who keep crying about these job losses or people who sympathise with you. You don’t need anybody’s sympathy; you need information about job openings and help in opening doors. Activate your contacts.
As you go out looking for jobs, do not badmouth the organisation or the people you work for. While it is genuinely inappropriate to do so, prospective employers too get put off by people who speak negatively about their previous organisations.
And lastly be realistic about your expectations from your new job. You will be lucky to land a brilliant job in a short time frame. If you do, count yourself blessed. However you might be better served to take up a job, which is a 7/10, rather than wait for the perfect job and be out of a job. Remember it is always better (and easier) to be in a job and look up that perfect job.
(The author is a banker and author of 'Devil in Pinstripes')Ravi Subramanian
Some call it redeployment, a few refer to it as realignment and many just restructuring. But there is one thing, which for sure accompanies any attempt at tweaking the organisation to achieve better efficiencies on the money spent on the “staff costs” line, and that is grief and uncertainty for the employees who are impacted. Invariably it leads to loss of jobs and the obvious loss of self-esteem for those affected. How does one deal with such situations, were they to arise?
First and foremost, if you are the impacted party, it is important to realise that such instances are not because of you. If any organisation decides to go in for a restructuring, it’s more an overall structural decision and often not based on individual skill sets. It is not of your doing. It is just that you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has little to do with your competencies or performance. That said, it makes sense to realise the writing on the wall and plan your future course of action.
“You just need to be realistic and cognizant of the fact that you quickly need an alternate employment. Look out for jobs outside the company. The market is large and opportunities aplenty”, says Meenakshi Reddy, a banking professional who recently lost her job to an organisational realignment.
Many times restructuring is accompanied by offers of alternate placement within the same organisation and internal job ads. But invariably these offers are more of a whitewash to ensure that the job losses do not come into public domain. “We have more jobs available within the organisation than the number of people rendered jobless by this exercise,” is a better press statement to make. “Do not restrict yourself to jobs within the organisation that you work for,” she adds.
“Do not bullshit about the reason why you are looking for a job? In an interview, there is nothing shameful in telling the interviewer, ‘My organisation decided to downsize and so I am looking for a job’. People tend to appreciate this honesty as against beating around the bush,” cautions the CEO of an NBFC who didn’t wan’t to be named. This just reinforces the fact that the Indian corporate culture has adapted itself to the world littered with pink slips. It may also be time to consider options and maybe even give wing to your entrepreneurial dreams, in case you have any. Put the separation money you get from the organisation to good use.
To people impacted by this, my advice would be to prevent negativity from creeping in. Remain positive. If you get into a negative mindset, it sends your confidence into a downward spiral, which will impact your ability to crack interviews outside. Avoid people who keep crying about these job losses or people who sympathise with you. You don’t need anybody’s sympathy; you need information about job openings and help in opening doors. Activate your contacts.
As you go out looking for jobs, do not badmouth the organisation or the people you work for. While it is genuinely inappropriate to do so, prospective employers too get put off by people who speak negatively about their previous organisations.
And lastly be realistic about your expectations from your new job. You will be lucky to land a brilliant job in a short time frame. If you do, count yourself blessed. However you might be better served to take up a job, which is a 7/10, rather than wait for the perfect job and be out of a job. Remember it is always better (and easier) to be in a job and look up that perfect job.
(The author is a banker and author of 'Devil in Pinstripes')Ravi Subramanian
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A B Town BPO
osted: Jul 25, 2004 at 0000 hrs IST
THE closer you look, the better it gets. In 2003, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) began work on a report to document all Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT-Enabled Services (ITES) activity in the country.The report was finally released in May 2004. In a sense, the results were a statement on the digital divide: 85 per cent of the call centre and IT services business, worth Rs 117 billion in exports, was found concentrated in 13 ‘‘clusters’’.
Yet there was room for David in Goliath’s realm. Between them, the Big Daddies — the National Capital Region (Delhi-Gurgaon-Noida; 103 companies), Bangalore (65), Mumbai (59), Hyderabad-Secundrabad (43) and Chennai (34) — accounted for 304 of India’s 404 BPO companies. The remaining 100 were spread across locations hitherto not associated with BPO, at least not in the popular imagination.
Industry researcher KPMG co-authored the report. It spoke of, among others, Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar (eight BPOs), Jaipur (six), Thiruvananthapuram (five), Cochin (three), Vishakapatnam (two). These ‘‘tier II’’ towns, along with second-rung metros like Kolkata and almost-metros like Pune — 10 BPOs apiece — were beginning to compete for a place on the Indian BPOscape.
Statistics can be misleading and a lower base obviously allows for high growth rates. That caveat notwithstanding, note that India’s BPO exports are growing at an annual 65 per cent. The NCR makes up a quarter of the export cake and is growing at 43 per cent. Jaipur has only 0.12 per cent of the BPO export market. It’s growing at a whopping 82 per cent (all figures for 2003-04).
It would seem logical. BPO entails business coming to India from the West to save costs. As such, it is perfectly in order to expect BPO units to chase a similar cost advantage within India, moving from bigger cities to cheaper, smaller towns.
Nasscom has watched the trend for two years now. ‘‘Traditionally, BPO and ITES centred around locations where the IT industry had developed,’’ says Nasscom vice-president Sangeeta Gupta, ‘‘but when high quality, affordable manpower became difficult to find in metros, hiring shifted to smaller towns.’’
The first big saving is in property prices. For instance, a BPO unit that moved to Mumbai in March 2004 would be paying upwards of Rs 150 per square foot as rent every month. If it had bought property at Nariman Point, it would have been set back by Rs 13,000 a square foot, according to real estate consultants Cushman and Wakefield.
Compare these with Nasscom-KPMG’s numbers for hired office space in Ahmedabad: Rs 20-25 a square foot a month, inclusive of key support facilities such as air-conditioning and telecom.
In many ways, the move to tier II towns echoes a trend that first succeeded in small-town America. Says Kaushal Mehta, Ahmedabad-based CEO of Motif India, a $3.5 million turnover BPO offering financial services for online auctions — eBay is a client — and similar back-up support to Fortune 500 companies such as Mellon, ‘‘In the US, all major call centres were located in suburbs, where real estate was cheap. So we chose Ahmedabad. Besides, opening a call centre in Mumbai and Chennai would mean risking your business to major players.’’
Kaushal Mehta, CEO of Motif India, does a $3.5 million turnover with eBay as a client. He chose Ahmedabad because real estate was half the price of Mumbai or Delhi Since opening in 2001, Motif has rented 35,000 square feet in Gujarat’s commercial capital. Beginning with an investment of $2 million — Kaushal Mehta and his wife Parul were IT professionals in the US who came home to entrepreneurship — its staff strength has grown from 35 to 350. Motif should be recruiting another 100 by the end of 2004.
Salaries begin at Rs 7,000. That’s low by Delhi or Mumbai standards — where HCL starts with Rs 12,000 and EXL eServices is in the Rs 10,000-14,000 range. But it’s attractive enough for Ahmedabad teens.
Interestingly, 70 per cent of Motif’s hiring is through referrals, cutting headhunting costs. An attrition rate of 15 per cent is way below Delhi’s 30-40 per cent or Gurgaon’s 25 per cent. In a sense, capitalism is feeding on small town community networks.
Ahmedabad's QX Ltd, a nine-month-old BPO, has 60 employees who ‘‘get more perks than their UK counterparts, including subsidised meals’’, according to its expat managing director Chris Robinson. An e-mail, web addresses and telecom service provider, Robinson was introduced to the idea of offshoring to India while channel surfing back home in Skipton, northern England.
He narrowed down on Ahmedabad after an extensive survey. The manpower pool was huge (‘‘Our biggest saving is in the staff’’), rentals a neat 50 per cent below UK levels. ‘‘We’re already a £15 million turnover company, though telecom costs doubled when we came to India,’’ says Robinson.
Also, small was large enough: ‘‘Ahmedabad is the size of Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK. So for us, it’s a big city... The metros are crowded. With big players like HSBC employing the best people, we did not want to compete. We buy businesses that are unprofitable in the UK and move them to India.’’
Sounds simple? ‘‘Well, simple it is, but it’s not always easy,’’ says Nasscom’s Gupta. ‘‘Even smaller towns are getting competitive,’’ she says, ‘‘there is a constant struggle for infrastructure and favourable government policies, even between states.’’
The struggle is heating up. An army of BPO players is ready to open branches in smaller towns. In Vishakapatnam, after HSBC announced a $50 billion BPO facility in 2003 — its financial back-office, as it were, for the rest of the planet — IT consultancy Ma Foi spoke of relocating its back-end centre there. In Vizag too, the Raheja Group is developing the Bheemunipatnam corridor: 4.5 million square feet of real estate earmarked for ITES-BPO companies.
Wipro Spectramind has plans for Gandhinagar, Sutherland Technologies, which now employees 6,500 people at its Chennai BPO, is looking at options in Kerala. At the cusp between small town and metro, Pune is remarkable in the number of IT-related companies showing an interest in moving there.
In Chandigarh-Mohali, the 200-strong software development centre run by Infosys is the showpiece. That aside, Dell, HCL Perot, Zensar, Audocomp and Cadmus are sniffing around. GE, according to NASSCOM-KPMG, has ‘‘strong plans’’ for expanding its presence in Jaipur.
In 2002, GE toyed with a proposal to reduce focus on Gurgaon and set up an expansive campus in Jaipur. ‘‘The plan,’’ says a former employee, ‘‘was to have staff living in hostels there and bringing them by bus to Delhi for the weekend.’’
The deal was almost done. Then GE’s American parent company chickened out, apprehensive at the thought of an India-Pakistan war. Rajasthan, after all, is a border state — even if Jaipur is about as far away from the frontier as Gurgaon. With peace back in circulation, perhaps the idea could be dusted up.
Even a decidedly old-economy hub like Indore is not immune to the BPO virus. Four major IT/BPO companies, including global giant Computer Sciences Centre (CSC) are at work there. Indian BPOs like Webdunia and Infobeans are based in Indore, as is the India office of Impetus, a midsize American IT/BPO firm.
Twenty-five per cent of CSC’s business worldwide comes from the US government. Of its 65,000 global employees, 2,500 are in India, evenly distributed between Indore’s Technology Park and Noida.
Webdunia and Impetus are based in New Palasia. This spanking district near Indore’s railway station is emerging as a sort of local Koramangula.
‘‘Our clients are US-based companies. The benefit of doing business with North America is that English language capabilities have developed in Indore and around,’’ says Vinay Chhajlani, who runs Webdunia. The company is into language-based solutions, though wireless networking and voice-based services are provided as well. It has 250-300 people in Indore and says it is growing at ‘‘40-50 per cent’’ every year.
A Nasscom study says national attrition rates are 35 per cent. In Jaipur’s BPOs, they’re at 10 per cent. In Gurgaon, the starting salary is Rs 12,000 or so. In Ahmedabad half that is enough, thank you Halfway across India, deep in Tamil country, Chhajlani would find a kindred spirit in B Kamath, CMD of Lasersoft Infosystems, which does BPO work in the banking industry. Now based in Chennai, Lasersoft is considering ancillary BPOs in Madurai, Salem and Coimbatore. Kamath explains why: ‘‘There is a lot of talent in the districts. Besides operation costs will come down by 30-40 per cent. In the next two years, there will be a lot of growth in BPOs in small towns.’’
However, in Chennai itself, Venkat Kumar, CEO of Astran and in the call centre business, is less hopeful. He says non-metros are unviable for the skills he requires: ‘‘Our company is not planning to go smaller towns.’’
In Delhi, an EXL executive puts things in perspective, ‘‘Look, it’s true that BPOs are going to smaller towns because that’s where a bulk of their recruits come from anyway. So instead of recruiting a Chandigarh kid in Delhi, you may as well take the job to him in his home town. It creates loyalty. But this is primarily non-voice work. Voice is still not moving.’’
Simply, call centres are not migrating as much as, say, insurance analysis is. When it comes to young people confident enough of speaking English, in whatever accent, on a phone line, metros still outscore B towns.
That aside, industry insiders point out infrastructure — from airlinks to telecom — and gaps in technology still give the Gurgaons and Hyderabads a headstart. ‘‘There are two big issues confronting smaller towns with BPO ambitions,’’ says an outsourcing analyst, ‘‘the digital divide and the accent divide.’’
Yet as Ranjit Narasimhan, Noida-based COO of HCL Tech BPO, puts it, ‘‘It is only a matter of time before the availability of a critical amount of accent-neutral educated youth in these regions will fuel the move to those locations.’’
Shorn of jargon that spells out a four letter word — hope. In Smallsville, BPO helps you dream big.
With Radha Venkatesan
Little Big Towns
And they’re calling it the new Bangalore
WHEN New York-headquartered EXL eService wanted to spread its wings outside Noida — where it has three centres — it did a quick survey of IT hotspots Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. ‘‘After a pretty scientific and objective assessment,’’ admits Rohit Kapoor, president-CFO, EXL, ‘‘we zeroed in on Pune.’’
For a host of reasons: availability of manpower (on an average 30,000 students graduate in Pune every year), technology, ease of access (Mumbai is three hours away on the expressway), lower competitive index (read rate of attrition is not as alarming), cost structure, great climate, good quality of life.
If cost and quality are the buzzwords of BPO success, Pune, with its ability to deliver on both, is cashing in. Over the past year, at least four large BPOs have set up shop in the city: EXL, Convergys, EDS and Amdocs.
This adds to an already imposing list, including Progeon (an Infosys arm), Wipro Spectramind, WNS, MphasiS, Xansa (it targets 3,000 employees by 2006), GTL, Oceans Connect, vCustomer and the captive BPOs of HSBC and P&O Nedlloyd. Software Technology Park of India, Pune’s outgoing chief Sushil Gupta says there are ‘‘at least three enquiries a day’’.
British BPO Xansa, which has centres in Noida and Chennai, chose Pune as the third centre because it wanted a ‘‘campus style facility, an impossibility in Mumbai or other metros which have space constraints’’. The company is building its facility over 16 acres at Talewade Software Park.
EXL has 900 employees at the Pune centre and is ramping up aggressively. One of its biggest clients is UK insurance giant Aviva, and without taking names, Kapoor says the company is adding four floors to the space it already has at Magarpatta City for ‘‘a single client’’.
Seattle-HQed vCustomer too chose Pune over other metros when it wanted to open its second India centre (the first is in Delhi). ‘‘Pune has a resource base critical for us. Besides, its cosmopolitan lifestyle is another big draw,’’ says Sanjay Kumar, CEO, vCustomer. It spent Rs 40 crore on a plush centre at Kalyani Nagar this March with a capacity of seating 3,000.
The real estate industry sniffs opportunity. Consider this: Over the next three years, at least five private IT parks are coming up in Pune. This despite the fact that there already software technology technology parks in Hinjewadi, Kharadi and Talewade, besides Magarpatta.
‘‘Bangalore and Hyderabad have reached saturation point. We must be ready now that IT companies are making a beeline for Pune,’’ says Rajas Jain, whose Kumar Properties is building a Rs 500-crore IT Park at Hadapsar.
But it’s not all good news. There are several areas in which Pune is still lacking: infrastructure, roads, power, international airport. Precious little is being done on these fronts, despite vision statements floating around, promising to make Pune the City Beautiful.
Sudipta Datta
A service natural wakes up. Finally
KOLKATA’S no small town but even its partisans will acknowledge it’s the left-behind metro, a services natural that forgot to catch BPO’s morning bus. Yet, in November 2003, Hewitt Associates ranked Kolkata among hot BPO destinations such as Pune, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.
‘‘People are keen to do business in Kolkata, so that they can tap the vast talent pool of engineers and graduates,’’ says Sudip Banerjee, president, enterprise solutions, at Wipro Spectramind, which has big BPO plans for Kolkata. The hunt is on to ‘‘top-up’’ a 17 acre plot Wipro Spectramind recently picked up with another four acres.
That aside, GE Capital is conducting final due diligence exercises. HSBC has plans to set up its captive call centre in the city.
There’re still issues of concern. Raman Roy, Wipro Spectramind’s CMD, says, ‘‘As a BPO destination, Kolkata has to grow in terms of providing quality infrastructure.’’ The state government recently brought BPO units under the ‘‘essential service’’ regime, freeing them from strikes and bandhs. ‘‘We ensured that nothing stops functioning for BPO units, even if there is a bandh or social unrest,’’ says G D Gautama, state IT secretary.
Kolkata's educated youth and affordability can be small start-up friendly too. Young entrepreneur Subhojit Goswami will vouch for this: ‘‘Kolkata has so many M.Com and B.Com graduates that I don’t need to go anywhere else to service my clients’ needs,’’ he says.
Goswami’s tiny BPO does payroll, accounts, MIS report-generating work for British clients. It is a mere 10-seater, and Kolkata’s BPO universe extends to only 3,000 people. But by the end of 2004, that is projected to rise to 8,000.
Dunno about elsewhere, but in Bengal they call that a boom.
Indranil Chakraborty
Study this case quartet
Ace Infotech | RajkotMaps for the worldIT calls itself one of the oldest BPOs in the country and was set up by partners Vikram Sanghani and Sanjay Dhamsania in 1992. Ace Infotech has two lines of business: Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping for US-based power companies and e-publishing. It has handled data conversion projects for encyclopedias, dictionaries, scientific, financial and legal journals. About 450 employees work in the two units in Rajkot; Hyderabad has another 500.
‘‘We have invested Rs 10 crore in the company,’’ says Sanghani, ‘‘and our growth rate is 30 per cent. Today we have zero debt and zero outside funding. We are all on our own.’’ The reason for preferring Rajkot over, say, Mumbai, was ‘‘cheaper real estate and manpower’’. Starting salaries are anything between Rs 6,000-8,000.
Rajkot college graduates are attracted by the relaxed work environment. Says Sanghani, ‘‘The majority of the work is offline in nature and timings too are flexible. The first shift is from 6 am to 2 pm and the second from 2 pm to 10 pm. So even those pursuing their degrees are keen to work here.’’
Ace Infotech recruits electrical engineers for online mapping projects and mathematics and humanities graduates for e-publishing. The two big engineering colleges in Rajkot are its captive talent pool. As for ‘‘attrition rate’’, well Sanghani’s never heard of the term.
Swapna Nair
Impetus Infotech | IndoreCut-price Silicon Valley‘‘IF there’s one thing engineers really, really want, it’s interesting work,’’ says John Winchester, vice-president, technology, at Impetus Infotech. Impetus is Indore’s oldest software R&D company, with clients in North America and Europe.
When Winchester moved to Indore from Cupertino, Silicon Valley country, southern California, in January 2004, he didn’t know if the ‘‘$5-$10 mn’’ Impetus would be ‘‘interesting’’ enough. ‘‘They have a reputation for hiring the best engineers and support 12 Fortune 500 clients,’’ he says. ‘‘But I was also looking for work as challenging as at NeuStar Inc, where I was earlier.’’
But Winchester can reflect on job satisfaction later. Right now, he’s ‘‘hiring engineers like mad’’, 12 are added every month to the 200-strong team in Indore. ‘‘We’re expanding,’’ he grins. You bet.
A bigger, fancier office block is coming up round the corner from the four-floor rented premises Impetus uses currently. Until the move, the new office doubles as practice pad for a staff rock band. The singing is half-enthusiastic, half-shy, the guitars are tried and tested. Throw in worse hair-dos and denims, and we may as well be in New Delhi or Gurgaon.
‘‘Barring some of the more exciting nightlife, Indore has everything you need or want — plus competitive costs,’’ says Pankaj Sharma, Impetus CFO. Land is three-fourths its price in Mumbai. Rentals are at Rs 55-75 per square foot. Attrition is a manageable 10-12 per cent, against a national industry average of 35 per cent.
Toss in the four engineering colleges within 200 km of Indore and starting salaries of Rs 12,000. What do you get? A sound business model for writing code and satelliteing it across the ocean.
It’s heavy-duty stuff Impetus is exporting. The technology that will move most of America’s mobile phone numbers to a new, common standard; the technology to make most of Europe’s mobile phone services ‘‘talk’’ to each other — it’s being designed right here in Indore.
Surprised? So were we.
Pragya Singh
Supportscape | Jaipur‘Torn jeans and a tie’IN a quiet corner of Jaipur’s otherwise busy Jamunalal Bajaj Marg stands a rather smart building. Every night, the four-storeyed Supportscape HQ comes alive. For a few moments, the chatter of excited ‘‘workers’’ trooping in to take charge of their ‘‘work stations’’ drowns out the sound of trains thundering down the track nearby.
They walk past dress code notices — ‘‘Torn jeans and tie’’, on the day this reporter paid a visit. Once in their zones, the transformation from Shally Maheshwary to Sally takes place and a ‘‘shy Jaipur resident’’ becomes a confident interlocutor for American clients. An M.Com graduate, Maheshwary has been at Supportscape for a year. She says she likes it, ‘‘I earn Rs 6,000. My parents are okay with it. And this place has given me confidence.’’
Like her, there are 150 people others at Supportscape who don fake identities and accents each day. Over four years, this tiny company has introduced the ‘‘call centre culture’’ to the Pink City.
‘‘When we started, we had the advantage of being first,’’ says Rakesh Bhambani, director, services, at Supportscape, ‘‘It was quicker to build a brand in a smaller city, in a state with no other call centres. Cost of living is cheaper, there is practically no competition. We pick and choose our employees.’’
The first mover advantage is now old hat. Even GE, the BPO giant, has set up a unit in Jaipur. While GE officials refused to speak, it is understood Jaipur figures high in their future plans.
Supportscape made a nervous start. Skilled manpower, fluent in English and computer literate, was hard to come by. But today it is ‘‘flooded with competent applicants’’.
Bhambani is cagey about names and figures, only saying revenue has grown 200 per cent in the past year. Clients include ‘‘Sony, Europe’s largest ISP provider and a video-game maker all set to take on Microsoft’s X-Pax and Sony’s Play Station II’’. Take your guesses.
Bhambani stresses the small city BPO story has its limits. While the Rajasthan government is gung-ho, talking of tax incentives and the ‘‘40 engineering colleges’’ opening in the state, Supportscape fears an HR crunch and infrastructure being unable to cope.
‘‘Never mind what the government says,’’ says Manuj Goyal, MD, Supportscape, ‘‘if even two more companies open call centres here, there will be a crisis. The city is not prepared and neither is the government.’’ Ouch.
Anuradha Nagaraj
Fortune Infotech | VadodaraBPO + Patel = BPOtel?
FIVE years ago, K K Patel started a small medical transcription business from a 1,000 square foot rented office in Sayajigunj, downtown Vadodara. Friends thought he was crazy, but Patel felt confident. In a half decade, Fortune Infotech’s turnover has grown from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 14 crore.
Today, Fortune’s ‘‘outsourcing factory’’ is a sprawling 30,000 square foot complex, complete with a swank corporate HQ, in Chhani, on the outskirts of the city. In a reversal of stereotype, this homegrown Gujarati BPO opened a branch office in Bangalore in 2001 — but you can guess where Patel’s heart lies. ‘‘The Vadodara office is the backbone of our operations,’’ he says.
It’s not just emotion. ‘‘If I compare my Bangalore and Vadodara offices,’’ Patel says, ‘‘quiet clearly, the cost of operation here is much lower.’’ Staff retention is not an issue: ‘‘In Bangalore at times we have almost the entire staff leaving and joining some other place. It doesn’t happen here.’’
Fortune’s focus is primarily non-voice based services — documentation, insurance claim process, invoice processing, health insurance claims, market surveys. Patel has 20 MNC clients, mainly American ones. No names but they include ‘‘five top health-service providers, a major pharma company and a big airline’’.
‘‘Very soon,’’ Patel says conspiratorially, ‘‘we will add the refund request processing of airlines to our services.’’
For business rivals, a combo of Gujarati Patel and BPO can be lethal. Bangalore, Cyberabad and the rest of you — be warned.
Rohit Bhan
THE closer you look, the better it gets. In 2003, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) began work on a report to document all Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT-Enabled Services (ITES) activity in the country.The report was finally released in May 2004. In a sense, the results were a statement on the digital divide: 85 per cent of the call centre and IT services business, worth Rs 117 billion in exports, was found concentrated in 13 ‘‘clusters’’.
Yet there was room for David in Goliath’s realm. Between them, the Big Daddies — the National Capital Region (Delhi-Gurgaon-Noida; 103 companies), Bangalore (65), Mumbai (59), Hyderabad-Secundrabad (43) and Chennai (34) — accounted for 304 of India’s 404 BPO companies. The remaining 100 were spread across locations hitherto not associated with BPO, at least not in the popular imagination.
Industry researcher KPMG co-authored the report. It spoke of, among others, Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar (eight BPOs), Jaipur (six), Thiruvananthapuram (five), Cochin (three), Vishakapatnam (two). These ‘‘tier II’’ towns, along with second-rung metros like Kolkata and almost-metros like Pune — 10 BPOs apiece — were beginning to compete for a place on the Indian BPOscape.
Statistics can be misleading and a lower base obviously allows for high growth rates. That caveat notwithstanding, note that India’s BPO exports are growing at an annual 65 per cent. The NCR makes up a quarter of the export cake and is growing at 43 per cent. Jaipur has only 0.12 per cent of the BPO export market. It’s growing at a whopping 82 per cent (all figures for 2003-04).
It would seem logical. BPO entails business coming to India from the West to save costs. As such, it is perfectly in order to expect BPO units to chase a similar cost advantage within India, moving from bigger cities to cheaper, smaller towns.
Nasscom has watched the trend for two years now. ‘‘Traditionally, BPO and ITES centred around locations where the IT industry had developed,’’ says Nasscom vice-president Sangeeta Gupta, ‘‘but when high quality, affordable manpower became difficult to find in metros, hiring shifted to smaller towns.’’
The first big saving is in property prices. For instance, a BPO unit that moved to Mumbai in March 2004 would be paying upwards of Rs 150 per square foot as rent every month. If it had bought property at Nariman Point, it would have been set back by Rs 13,000 a square foot, according to real estate consultants Cushman and Wakefield.
Compare these with Nasscom-KPMG’s numbers for hired office space in Ahmedabad: Rs 20-25 a square foot a month, inclusive of key support facilities such as air-conditioning and telecom.
In many ways, the move to tier II towns echoes a trend that first succeeded in small-town America. Says Kaushal Mehta, Ahmedabad-based CEO of Motif India, a $3.5 million turnover BPO offering financial services for online auctions — eBay is a client — and similar back-up support to Fortune 500 companies such as Mellon, ‘‘In the US, all major call centres were located in suburbs, where real estate was cheap. So we chose Ahmedabad. Besides, opening a call centre in Mumbai and Chennai would mean risking your business to major players.’’
Kaushal Mehta, CEO of Motif India, does a $3.5 million turnover with eBay as a client. He chose Ahmedabad because real estate was half the price of Mumbai or Delhi Since opening in 2001, Motif has rented 35,000 square feet in Gujarat’s commercial capital. Beginning with an investment of $2 million — Kaushal Mehta and his wife Parul were IT professionals in the US who came home to entrepreneurship — its staff strength has grown from 35 to 350. Motif should be recruiting another 100 by the end of 2004.
Salaries begin at Rs 7,000. That’s low by Delhi or Mumbai standards — where HCL starts with Rs 12,000 and EXL eServices is in the Rs 10,000-14,000 range. But it’s attractive enough for Ahmedabad teens.
Interestingly, 70 per cent of Motif’s hiring is through referrals, cutting headhunting costs. An attrition rate of 15 per cent is way below Delhi’s 30-40 per cent or Gurgaon’s 25 per cent. In a sense, capitalism is feeding on small town community networks.
Ahmedabad's QX Ltd, a nine-month-old BPO, has 60 employees who ‘‘get more perks than their UK counterparts, including subsidised meals’’, according to its expat managing director Chris Robinson. An e-mail, web addresses and telecom service provider, Robinson was introduced to the idea of offshoring to India while channel surfing back home in Skipton, northern England.
He narrowed down on Ahmedabad after an extensive survey. The manpower pool was huge (‘‘Our biggest saving is in the staff’’), rentals a neat 50 per cent below UK levels. ‘‘We’re already a £15 million turnover company, though telecom costs doubled when we came to India,’’ says Robinson.
Also, small was large enough: ‘‘Ahmedabad is the size of Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK. So for us, it’s a big city... The metros are crowded. With big players like HSBC employing the best people, we did not want to compete. We buy businesses that are unprofitable in the UK and move them to India.’’
Sounds simple? ‘‘Well, simple it is, but it’s not always easy,’’ says Nasscom’s Gupta. ‘‘Even smaller towns are getting competitive,’’ she says, ‘‘there is a constant struggle for infrastructure and favourable government policies, even between states.’’
The struggle is heating up. An army of BPO players is ready to open branches in smaller towns. In Vishakapatnam, after HSBC announced a $50 billion BPO facility in 2003 — its financial back-office, as it were, for the rest of the planet — IT consultancy Ma Foi spoke of relocating its back-end centre there. In Vizag too, the Raheja Group is developing the Bheemunipatnam corridor: 4.5 million square feet of real estate earmarked for ITES-BPO companies.
Wipro Spectramind has plans for Gandhinagar, Sutherland Technologies, which now employees 6,500 people at its Chennai BPO, is looking at options in Kerala. At the cusp between small town and metro, Pune is remarkable in the number of IT-related companies showing an interest in moving there.
In Chandigarh-Mohali, the 200-strong software development centre run by Infosys is the showpiece. That aside, Dell, HCL Perot, Zensar, Audocomp and Cadmus are sniffing around. GE, according to NASSCOM-KPMG, has ‘‘strong plans’’ for expanding its presence in Jaipur.
In 2002, GE toyed with a proposal to reduce focus on Gurgaon and set up an expansive campus in Jaipur. ‘‘The plan,’’ says a former employee, ‘‘was to have staff living in hostels there and bringing them by bus to Delhi for the weekend.’’
The deal was almost done. Then GE’s American parent company chickened out, apprehensive at the thought of an India-Pakistan war. Rajasthan, after all, is a border state — even if Jaipur is about as far away from the frontier as Gurgaon. With peace back in circulation, perhaps the idea could be dusted up.
Even a decidedly old-economy hub like Indore is not immune to the BPO virus. Four major IT/BPO companies, including global giant Computer Sciences Centre (CSC) are at work there. Indian BPOs like Webdunia and Infobeans are based in Indore, as is the India office of Impetus, a midsize American IT/BPO firm.
Twenty-five per cent of CSC’s business worldwide comes from the US government. Of its 65,000 global employees, 2,500 are in India, evenly distributed between Indore’s Technology Park and Noida.
Webdunia and Impetus are based in New Palasia. This spanking district near Indore’s railway station is emerging as a sort of local Koramangula.
‘‘Our clients are US-based companies. The benefit of doing business with North America is that English language capabilities have developed in Indore and around,’’ says Vinay Chhajlani, who runs Webdunia. The company is into language-based solutions, though wireless networking and voice-based services are provided as well. It has 250-300 people in Indore and says it is growing at ‘‘40-50 per cent’’ every year.
A Nasscom study says national attrition rates are 35 per cent. In Jaipur’s BPOs, they’re at 10 per cent. In Gurgaon, the starting salary is Rs 12,000 or so. In Ahmedabad half that is enough, thank you Halfway across India, deep in Tamil country, Chhajlani would find a kindred spirit in B Kamath, CMD of Lasersoft Infosystems, which does BPO work in the banking industry. Now based in Chennai, Lasersoft is considering ancillary BPOs in Madurai, Salem and Coimbatore. Kamath explains why: ‘‘There is a lot of talent in the districts. Besides operation costs will come down by 30-40 per cent. In the next two years, there will be a lot of growth in BPOs in small towns.’’
However, in Chennai itself, Venkat Kumar, CEO of Astran and in the call centre business, is less hopeful. He says non-metros are unviable for the skills he requires: ‘‘Our company is not planning to go smaller towns.’’
In Delhi, an EXL executive puts things in perspective, ‘‘Look, it’s true that BPOs are going to smaller towns because that’s where a bulk of their recruits come from anyway. So instead of recruiting a Chandigarh kid in Delhi, you may as well take the job to him in his home town. It creates loyalty. But this is primarily non-voice work. Voice is still not moving.’’
Simply, call centres are not migrating as much as, say, insurance analysis is. When it comes to young people confident enough of speaking English, in whatever accent, on a phone line, metros still outscore B towns.
That aside, industry insiders point out infrastructure — from airlinks to telecom — and gaps in technology still give the Gurgaons and Hyderabads a headstart. ‘‘There are two big issues confronting smaller towns with BPO ambitions,’’ says an outsourcing analyst, ‘‘the digital divide and the accent divide.’’
Yet as Ranjit Narasimhan, Noida-based COO of HCL Tech BPO, puts it, ‘‘It is only a matter of time before the availability of a critical amount of accent-neutral educated youth in these regions will fuel the move to those locations.’’
Shorn of jargon that spells out a four letter word — hope. In Smallsville, BPO helps you dream big.
With Radha Venkatesan
Little Big Towns
And they’re calling it the new Bangalore
WHEN New York-headquartered EXL eService wanted to spread its wings outside Noida — where it has three centres — it did a quick survey of IT hotspots Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. ‘‘After a pretty scientific and objective assessment,’’ admits Rohit Kapoor, president-CFO, EXL, ‘‘we zeroed in on Pune.’’
For a host of reasons: availability of manpower (on an average 30,000 students graduate in Pune every year), technology, ease of access (Mumbai is three hours away on the expressway), lower competitive index (read rate of attrition is not as alarming), cost structure, great climate, good quality of life.
If cost and quality are the buzzwords of BPO success, Pune, with its ability to deliver on both, is cashing in. Over the past year, at least four large BPOs have set up shop in the city: EXL, Convergys, EDS and Amdocs.
This adds to an already imposing list, including Progeon (an Infosys arm), Wipro Spectramind, WNS, MphasiS, Xansa (it targets 3,000 employees by 2006), GTL, Oceans Connect, vCustomer and the captive BPOs of HSBC and P&O Nedlloyd. Software Technology Park of India, Pune’s outgoing chief Sushil Gupta says there are ‘‘at least three enquiries a day’’.
British BPO Xansa, which has centres in Noida and Chennai, chose Pune as the third centre because it wanted a ‘‘campus style facility, an impossibility in Mumbai or other metros which have space constraints’’. The company is building its facility over 16 acres at Talewade Software Park.
EXL has 900 employees at the Pune centre and is ramping up aggressively. One of its biggest clients is UK insurance giant Aviva, and without taking names, Kapoor says the company is adding four floors to the space it already has at Magarpatta City for ‘‘a single client’’.
Seattle-HQed vCustomer too chose Pune over other metros when it wanted to open its second India centre (the first is in Delhi). ‘‘Pune has a resource base critical for us. Besides, its cosmopolitan lifestyle is another big draw,’’ says Sanjay Kumar, CEO, vCustomer. It spent Rs 40 crore on a plush centre at Kalyani Nagar this March with a capacity of seating 3,000.
The real estate industry sniffs opportunity. Consider this: Over the next three years, at least five private IT parks are coming up in Pune. This despite the fact that there already software technology technology parks in Hinjewadi, Kharadi and Talewade, besides Magarpatta.
‘‘Bangalore and Hyderabad have reached saturation point. We must be ready now that IT companies are making a beeline for Pune,’’ says Rajas Jain, whose Kumar Properties is building a Rs 500-crore IT Park at Hadapsar.
But it’s not all good news. There are several areas in which Pune is still lacking: infrastructure, roads, power, international airport. Precious little is being done on these fronts, despite vision statements floating around, promising to make Pune the City Beautiful.
Sudipta Datta
A service natural wakes up. Finally
KOLKATA’S no small town but even its partisans will acknowledge it’s the left-behind metro, a services natural that forgot to catch BPO’s morning bus. Yet, in November 2003, Hewitt Associates ranked Kolkata among hot BPO destinations such as Pune, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.
‘‘People are keen to do business in Kolkata, so that they can tap the vast talent pool of engineers and graduates,’’ says Sudip Banerjee, president, enterprise solutions, at Wipro Spectramind, which has big BPO plans for Kolkata. The hunt is on to ‘‘top-up’’ a 17 acre plot Wipro Spectramind recently picked up with another four acres.
That aside, GE Capital is conducting final due diligence exercises. HSBC has plans to set up its captive call centre in the city.
There’re still issues of concern. Raman Roy, Wipro Spectramind’s CMD, says, ‘‘As a BPO destination, Kolkata has to grow in terms of providing quality infrastructure.’’ The state government recently brought BPO units under the ‘‘essential service’’ regime, freeing them from strikes and bandhs. ‘‘We ensured that nothing stops functioning for BPO units, even if there is a bandh or social unrest,’’ says G D Gautama, state IT secretary.
Kolkata's educated youth and affordability can be small start-up friendly too. Young entrepreneur Subhojit Goswami will vouch for this: ‘‘Kolkata has so many M.Com and B.Com graduates that I don’t need to go anywhere else to service my clients’ needs,’’ he says.
Goswami’s tiny BPO does payroll, accounts, MIS report-generating work for British clients. It is a mere 10-seater, and Kolkata’s BPO universe extends to only 3,000 people. But by the end of 2004, that is projected to rise to 8,000.
Dunno about elsewhere, but in Bengal they call that a boom.
Indranil Chakraborty
Study this case quartet
Ace Infotech | RajkotMaps for the worldIT calls itself one of the oldest BPOs in the country and was set up by partners Vikram Sanghani and Sanjay Dhamsania in 1992. Ace Infotech has two lines of business: Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping for US-based power companies and e-publishing. It has handled data conversion projects for encyclopedias, dictionaries, scientific, financial and legal journals. About 450 employees work in the two units in Rajkot; Hyderabad has another 500.
‘‘We have invested Rs 10 crore in the company,’’ says Sanghani, ‘‘and our growth rate is 30 per cent. Today we have zero debt and zero outside funding. We are all on our own.’’ The reason for preferring Rajkot over, say, Mumbai, was ‘‘cheaper real estate and manpower’’. Starting salaries are anything between Rs 6,000-8,000.
Rajkot college graduates are attracted by the relaxed work environment. Says Sanghani, ‘‘The majority of the work is offline in nature and timings too are flexible. The first shift is from 6 am to 2 pm and the second from 2 pm to 10 pm. So even those pursuing their degrees are keen to work here.’’
Ace Infotech recruits electrical engineers for online mapping projects and mathematics and humanities graduates for e-publishing. The two big engineering colleges in Rajkot are its captive talent pool. As for ‘‘attrition rate’’, well Sanghani’s never heard of the term.
Swapna Nair
Impetus Infotech | IndoreCut-price Silicon Valley‘‘IF there’s one thing engineers really, really want, it’s interesting work,’’ says John Winchester, vice-president, technology, at Impetus Infotech. Impetus is Indore’s oldest software R&D company, with clients in North America and Europe.
When Winchester moved to Indore from Cupertino, Silicon Valley country, southern California, in January 2004, he didn’t know if the ‘‘$5-$10 mn’’ Impetus would be ‘‘interesting’’ enough. ‘‘They have a reputation for hiring the best engineers and support 12 Fortune 500 clients,’’ he says. ‘‘But I was also looking for work as challenging as at NeuStar Inc, where I was earlier.’’
But Winchester can reflect on job satisfaction later. Right now, he’s ‘‘hiring engineers like mad’’, 12 are added every month to the 200-strong team in Indore. ‘‘We’re expanding,’’ he grins. You bet.
A bigger, fancier office block is coming up round the corner from the four-floor rented premises Impetus uses currently. Until the move, the new office doubles as practice pad for a staff rock band. The singing is half-enthusiastic, half-shy, the guitars are tried and tested. Throw in worse hair-dos and denims, and we may as well be in New Delhi or Gurgaon.
‘‘Barring some of the more exciting nightlife, Indore has everything you need or want — plus competitive costs,’’ says Pankaj Sharma, Impetus CFO. Land is three-fourths its price in Mumbai. Rentals are at Rs 55-75 per square foot. Attrition is a manageable 10-12 per cent, against a national industry average of 35 per cent.
Toss in the four engineering colleges within 200 km of Indore and starting salaries of Rs 12,000. What do you get? A sound business model for writing code and satelliteing it across the ocean.
It’s heavy-duty stuff Impetus is exporting. The technology that will move most of America’s mobile phone numbers to a new, common standard; the technology to make most of Europe’s mobile phone services ‘‘talk’’ to each other — it’s being designed right here in Indore.
Surprised? So were we.
Pragya Singh
Supportscape | Jaipur‘Torn jeans and a tie’IN a quiet corner of Jaipur’s otherwise busy Jamunalal Bajaj Marg stands a rather smart building. Every night, the four-storeyed Supportscape HQ comes alive. For a few moments, the chatter of excited ‘‘workers’’ trooping in to take charge of their ‘‘work stations’’ drowns out the sound of trains thundering down the track nearby.
They walk past dress code notices — ‘‘Torn jeans and tie’’, on the day this reporter paid a visit. Once in their zones, the transformation from Shally Maheshwary to Sally takes place and a ‘‘shy Jaipur resident’’ becomes a confident interlocutor for American clients. An M.Com graduate, Maheshwary has been at Supportscape for a year. She says she likes it, ‘‘I earn Rs 6,000. My parents are okay with it. And this place has given me confidence.’’
Like her, there are 150 people others at Supportscape who don fake identities and accents each day. Over four years, this tiny company has introduced the ‘‘call centre culture’’ to the Pink City.
‘‘When we started, we had the advantage of being first,’’ says Rakesh Bhambani, director, services, at Supportscape, ‘‘It was quicker to build a brand in a smaller city, in a state with no other call centres. Cost of living is cheaper, there is practically no competition. We pick and choose our employees.’’
The first mover advantage is now old hat. Even GE, the BPO giant, has set up a unit in Jaipur. While GE officials refused to speak, it is understood Jaipur figures high in their future plans.
Supportscape made a nervous start. Skilled manpower, fluent in English and computer literate, was hard to come by. But today it is ‘‘flooded with competent applicants’’.
Bhambani is cagey about names and figures, only saying revenue has grown 200 per cent in the past year. Clients include ‘‘Sony, Europe’s largest ISP provider and a video-game maker all set to take on Microsoft’s X-Pax and Sony’s Play Station II’’. Take your guesses.
Bhambani stresses the small city BPO story has its limits. While the Rajasthan government is gung-ho, talking of tax incentives and the ‘‘40 engineering colleges’’ opening in the state, Supportscape fears an HR crunch and infrastructure being unable to cope.
‘‘Never mind what the government says,’’ says Manuj Goyal, MD, Supportscape, ‘‘if even two more companies open call centres here, there will be a crisis. The city is not prepared and neither is the government.’’ Ouch.
Anuradha Nagaraj
Fortune Infotech | VadodaraBPO + Patel = BPOtel?
FIVE years ago, K K Patel started a small medical transcription business from a 1,000 square foot rented office in Sayajigunj, downtown Vadodara. Friends thought he was crazy, but Patel felt confident. In a half decade, Fortune Infotech’s turnover has grown from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 14 crore.
Today, Fortune’s ‘‘outsourcing factory’’ is a sprawling 30,000 square foot complex, complete with a swank corporate HQ, in Chhani, on the outskirts of the city. In a reversal of stereotype, this homegrown Gujarati BPO opened a branch office in Bangalore in 2001 — but you can guess where Patel’s heart lies. ‘‘The Vadodara office is the backbone of our operations,’’ he says.
It’s not just emotion. ‘‘If I compare my Bangalore and Vadodara offices,’’ Patel says, ‘‘quiet clearly, the cost of operation here is much lower.’’ Staff retention is not an issue: ‘‘In Bangalore at times we have almost the entire staff leaving and joining some other place. It doesn’t happen here.’’
Fortune’s focus is primarily non-voice based services — documentation, insurance claim process, invoice processing, health insurance claims, market surveys. Patel has 20 MNC clients, mainly American ones. No names but they include ‘‘five top health-service providers, a major pharma company and a big airline’’.
‘‘Very soon,’’ Patel says conspiratorially, ‘‘we will add the refund request processing of airlines to our services.’’
For business rivals, a combo of Gujarati Patel and BPO can be lethal. Bangalore, Cyberabad and the rest of you — be warned.
Rohit Bhan
BPOs open their doors to the young at heart
GURGAON: Call centre floors are just for college grads and undergrads. Right? Well, not exactly! A host of BPO companies in India such as Genpact, IBM Daksh, Convergys and Vertex, are now hiring people above 40 for entry-level call centre jobs.
Though different companies attribute different reasons for the trend, analysts say it’s another attempt to arrest growing entry-level attrition rates in the industry.
The profile of employees that companies have hired in the 40+ age group include housewives, erstwhile self-employed or freelance professionals and ex-defence servicemen (retiring out of short service commission).
Analysts say the biggest factor that has contributed to this trend is the need for stability in BPOs. Says Achal Khanna, country general manager, Kelly Services India, a staff solutions company, “In this age group, there’s more stability and career aspirations are also not as high.
Most people, particularly housewives who have taken up such jobs, have done so just to get some additional income for the family. Interestingly, despite all this, there have been some notable growth stories of such execs becoming team leaders in just 3-4 months.”
Companies, for their part, say it’s just routine growth and there isn’t much conscious effort to recruit people from particular age groups. Says Piyush Mehta, senior vice president, HR, Genpact, “While recruiting, we have never differentiated in terms of age. In the last couple of years, we have recruited more than 500 people in the 40+ age group.”
According to Rohit Chanana, business head, Hero ITES, hiring people in this age group has also helped companies strike some kind of a balance between “youthful activism and maturity” on their call floors. “All along, call centres have been considered fun places, meant just for young graduates. With this HR innovation, we will be able to strike a more balanced floor ratio,” he says.
Interestingly, in some well-known call-centres, the mature execs have also doubled up as counsellors for their younger counterparts. According to industry watchers, there are some companies which have pro-actively embarked upon recruiting older people, with the larger target being to strike a 1:10 ratio.
“Since most execs are in the 20-22 age group, they need constant counselling on various aspects of their professional life. They can find it coming easily from their older colleagues,” says Ms Khanna.
Though different companies attribute different reasons for the trend, analysts say it’s another attempt to arrest growing entry-level attrition rates in the industry.
The profile of employees that companies have hired in the 40+ age group include housewives, erstwhile self-employed or freelance professionals and ex-defence servicemen (retiring out of short service commission).
Analysts say the biggest factor that has contributed to this trend is the need for stability in BPOs. Says Achal Khanna, country general manager, Kelly Services India, a staff solutions company, “In this age group, there’s more stability and career aspirations are also not as high.
Most people, particularly housewives who have taken up such jobs, have done so just to get some additional income for the family. Interestingly, despite all this, there have been some notable growth stories of such execs becoming team leaders in just 3-4 months.”
Companies, for their part, say it’s just routine growth and there isn’t much conscious effort to recruit people from particular age groups. Says Piyush Mehta, senior vice president, HR, Genpact, “While recruiting, we have never differentiated in terms of age. In the last couple of years, we have recruited more than 500 people in the 40+ age group.”
According to Rohit Chanana, business head, Hero ITES, hiring people in this age group has also helped companies strike some kind of a balance between “youthful activism and maturity” on their call floors. “All along, call centres have been considered fun places, meant just for young graduates. With this HR innovation, we will be able to strike a more balanced floor ratio,” he says.
Interestingly, in some well-known call-centres, the mature execs have also doubled up as counsellors for their younger counterparts. According to industry watchers, there are some companies which have pro-actively embarked upon recruiting older people, with the larger target being to strike a 1:10 ratio.
“Since most execs are in the 20-22 age group, they need constant counselling on various aspects of their professional life. They can find it coming easily from their older colleagues,” says Ms Khanna.
catch em Old
Catch `em old
Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee
| Life begins at 40 and above. BPO companies are hiring middle-aged people with the right skills and experience - and the pep for work. This helps keep attrition down while bringing maturity and commitment to the game. Some things get better with age. |
AT 50, M.K. Sharma's (name changed on request) life is quite unlike that of his friends or colleagues who opted for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme offered by the nationalised bank they had worked half their lives with.
He dabbled in business for a while but then gave it up to join a new organisation in 2004.
On a typical day, you would see him rushing to make it to office on time, like any other officegoer. But that is where the similarity ends.
Once inside the workplace, he walks to a workstation and after exchanging pleasantries with his colleagues, picks up his headset and prepares to take the first call across time zones as a BPO agent.
The initial discomfort of working in a bay where the majority of his colleagues belong to the next generation is long gone, giving way to a confidence that he has made a place for himself in an industry where the average age of the workers is about 24 years.
"The decision to leave my previous job in the bank was more to do with my reluctance to be transferred from Delhi after being promoted. It was initially difficult to adjust to the BPO work culture and there was a mild opposition from my family as well. But things have worked out fine now," says Sharma, who works with HeroITES in Gurgaon.
With the attrition rate in BPOs ranging anywhere between 30-120 per cent — based on companies, and nature of operations (voice, non-voice, shift and location) — players such as HeroITES are now proactively scouting for candidates in the 40-45 age group or above, as part of a strategy to establish a higher element of continuity for employees and the organisation.
"The inherent nature of the BPO industry, which tends to depend on large-scale employment of young, fresh graduates, leads to a situation where, in most cases, employees are still exploring career options even after joining a BPO organisation. This leads the young staff to switch career or opt for higher education alternatives; switch companies while being in the same career profile to avail quick, repetitive salary jumps; or at times leave an organisation in absence of learning or growth opportunities, especially in generic call centres where work may be repetitive and without any tangible value-add to an employee's career progression," says Vipul Doshi, Chief Executive Officer of InterGlobe Technologies.
What makes things worse is the fact that the attrition level in the BPO industry has been rising in the last couple of years. "This has been primarily because of the large number of new entrants into the BPO industry, and employees looking for new opportunities in other companies," addsPramod Bhasin, President and CEO of Genpact.
Given these hard ground realities, an organisation's ability to retain its people has become the key differentiator in a highly competitive BPO marketplace.
Agrees Padma Singh, Vice-President-Human Resource, HeroITES, who feels that the high attrition levels in the industry not only hamper the growth and performance of an organisation but have also emerged as a key client concern.
In contrast, the attrition rate amongst employees who are 40 years and above is negligible. "Besides offering stability to the workforce, these employees offer other advantages including a high level of dedication, readiness and potential to move to the next level," she says.
As a result, HeroITES has been issuing special advertisements in job portals and newspapers, calling housewives and retired candidates to become a part of the organisation, provided they have the required academic qualification and experience, and strong communication skills. Those who have applied come from a diverse background, including event managers, teachers, homemakers (with or without prior work experience), defence personnel, entrepreneurs, and, of course, banking professionals who have opted for VRS.
"Currently this is a much smaller pool, that is, just under 10 per cent of the total workforce, and we plan to increase it at a steady pace," says Padma Singh.
For Genpact, `hiring without discrimination' has been one of the ways of addressing the growing shortage of skilled manpower. In the past year, Genpact has hired 289 associates above the age of 40, and this accounted for 9 per cent of the total hires for the past year.
"This helps us build a representative and diverse workforce. Candidates over the age of 40 are hired through Genpact's normal hiring channels, which include print ads, consultants and employee referrals. We believe these older employees are a valuable resource pool at Genpact as they bring diverse experience and skill-sets cutting across domains," Genpact's Bhasin points out.
Like all prospective candidates, the older job aspirants too undergo the normal assessment process, plus an additional round with an Assistant Vice-President of HR to understand their aspirations and get sensitised about the work culture, the entire exercise aimed at enabling them to evaluate their cultural fit in the organisation. Once a part of the company, these employees are put on the regular grind, including night-shifts — just like their younger counterparts.
"Employees over the age of 40 are usually assigned to work wherever we have appropriate opportunities. They go through the same training and learning as any other employee. Our effort is to integrate them with the mainstream, and treat them like any other employee in terms of roles and responsibilities. We have observed that they do not require any additional training, and instead many such applicants bring additional skills, expertise and maturity to the job," he adds.
For instance, as a global travel technology company providing integrated IT solutions, BPO and consulting services to international airlines and travel industry corporations, InterGlobe Technologies looks for a diverse mix of skills, knowledge and aptitude that go far beyond the standard industry profile of a BPO or a call centre employee.
"In fact, IGT also draws upon the resource knowledge base of its Group companies, especially in travel-specific roles that address travel agency-related processes such as fares service, or specific airline functions such as revenue accounting, ticketing, back office queue processing as well as customer support. These functions require specific industry skills that people in the 40-45 year age group can well provide," Doshi of IGT adds.
Growth opportunity
In return, the companies are trying to define a clear growth path for their employees. An employee of InterGlobe Technologies, which is a part of a larger travel services organisation that has business interests in airline and cruise representation, GDS distribution, and Aviation and hospitality services, has the option to grow by seeking a transfer to a group company or to a separate division — after a minimum 18 months of service.
"He can, therefore, build a career as a travel industry consultant or in airline services in airport operations, city office operations or in training or even sales," Doshi says.
However, from a BPO perspective, keeping the average age group ratio in mind, acceptability and integration can prove to be difficult at times, opines Ranjit Narasimhan, President and CEO of HCL BPO, where older employees comprise about 1 per cent of the workforce.
According to Navanit, Chief Operating Officer of Epicenter Technologies, the real challenge lies in finding the right fit for the right profile as the talent pool available at this level is `yet to mature' from the point of view of the BPO industry.
"They need time to understand the process, and the work culture, and not feel out of place. But there will definitely be positive progress in this direction as other companies also become open to the idea of hiring from the older age group," he adds.
BPOs come of age, hire 30-plus employees
BPOs come of age, hire 30-plus employees
Mumbai, Sep 19: The ITES industry is now looking to break the monopoly of youth and swashbuckling teenagers, with BPO/KPO firms open to providing an ideal opportunity to mid-career professionals. On an average, roughly 5-10% or in some cases, even 15% of the total workforce in these companies now consist of those who are between 30-45 years. BPO/KPO firms are seriously looking at hiring more candidates from this age group.
Says Malini Deekshit, vice-president-HR, HTMT Global Solutions, “We employ candidates in the age group of 30-45 years. However, at present, the percentage is not too high. But we are considering hiring more of these candidates as employing them will certainly help us control attrition. This set of employees will also bring in maturity and stability to the processes, in turn helping us build and nurture a team of experienced and mature leaders.”
Mumbai-based BPO major Firstsource Solutions Ltd, at present, has 20% of its total candidate within this age group. Similarly, Cross Tab, a KPO firm, has about 15% of its total employees in the age group of 30-40 years. Says Ashwin Mittal, director, “We are looking at hiring more middle-aged employees as the maturity, experience and long term perspective these candidates have, cannot be matched.”
According to industry players, a BPO or a call centre is not a fun place but serious business. Mumbai-based Effort BPO, at present, has 20-25% of employees within 30-45 years age bracket in its back office operations. However, it contributes to about 2-3% of the total employees at present. Effort BPO, which has about 1,500 seats, will add 6,000 seats by 2009 and is looking to employ more people above 30 years of age.
Declining to share any specifics, Manuel D’Souza, executive VP-HR, Intelenet Global Services, said that the company prefers older employees. Says he, “As far as all candidates are concerned, we look for a balance between skills and attitudes. For a service oriented industry like BPO, certain attitude like customer centricity is important along with the ability to work in shifts.”
Mumbai, Sep 19: The ITES industry is now looking to break the monopoly of youth and swashbuckling teenagers, with BPO/KPO firms open to providing an ideal opportunity to mid-career professionals. On an average, roughly 5-10% or in some cases, even 15% of the total workforce in these companies now consist of those who are between 30-45 years. BPO/KPO firms are seriously looking at hiring more candidates from this age group.
Says Malini Deekshit, vice-president-HR, HTMT Global Solutions, “We employ candidates in the age group of 30-45 years. However, at present, the percentage is not too high. But we are considering hiring more of these candidates as employing them will certainly help us control attrition. This set of employees will also bring in maturity and stability to the processes, in turn helping us build and nurture a team of experienced and mature leaders.”
Mumbai-based BPO major Firstsource Solutions Ltd, at present, has 20% of its total candidate within this age group. Similarly, Cross Tab, a KPO firm, has about 15% of its total employees in the age group of 30-40 years. Says Ashwin Mittal, director, “We are looking at hiring more middle-aged employees as the maturity, experience and long term perspective these candidates have, cannot be matched.”
According to industry players, a BPO or a call centre is not a fun place but serious business. Mumbai-based Effort BPO, at present, has 20-25% of employees within 30-45 years age bracket in its back office operations. However, it contributes to about 2-3% of the total employees at present. Effort BPO, which has about 1,500 seats, will add 6,000 seats by 2009 and is looking to employ more people above 30 years of age.
Declining to share any specifics, Manuel D’Souza, executive VP-HR, Intelenet Global Services, said that the company prefers older employees. Says he, “As far as all candidates are concerned, we look for a balance between skills and attitudes. For a service oriented industry like BPO, certain attitude like customer centricity is important along with the ability to work in shifts.”
BPO: a long-term career option
A BPO career is no longer considered as a lucrative stop-gap opportunity. Renuka Vembu
tries to understand how the perception has changed over the years
Change for the better?
|
- Pawan Sharma |
|
- Aniruddha Limaye |
|
- Harsh Vinayak |
|
- Manuel D’Souza |
|
- Tim Huiting |
|
- Sandeep Soni |
"The traditional convention no longer holds true; employees now prefer to work night shifts, so that they can assume their personal responsibilities during the day"
"People working with WNS
"Demand is high in the BFSI sector, for chartered accountants, acturians, underwriters, etc., while in the industry there is a shortage for employees with good command over English and other foreign languages"
"Seven years down the line, the share of voice process has reduced owing to the industry’s transition to higher value-added activities like feature-rich and non-voice transactions such as invoice processing, and company and equity research"
"Operations management, quality control and assurance, business development, project management and process migration, client services and account management, facilities and infrastructure management, are some of the career options in BPOs"
"Transport facility, attractive lifestyle, medical insurance coverage, performance-based incentives, recreation, cafeteria, concierge facilities, are just a few examples that the BPO industry offers to an individual"There was some skepticism and a lot of criticism about the outsourcing phenomenon—questions about its very survival to its ill-effects on the gen-next, every move was under the scanner. But as the story goes, and the case study is evident, it has survived and it is here to stay. BPOs are no longer restricted to the initial notion of being pertinent to tele-calling alone. Almost, all areas of interest and specialization can be honed and nurtured. Careers are shaped, progression is charted out, skills are put to use, and monetary and intangible benefits, a by-product.
Harsh Vinayak, Senior VP, Keane, said, “In the past four-five years, not only have we seen a reverse trend in the ITES sector, but in the general psyche of Indian parents also who are slowly understanding that in new India, meaningful employment and career growth opportunities can be obtained without an engineering or a medical degree. This coupled with the fact that the BPO sector in India has moved up the knowledge process value chain requiring people with higher education, has brought in the acceptance of BPO as a long-term career option.” He added that demand was high in the BFSI sector, for chartered accountants, acturians, underwriters, etc., while the industry has also been plagued by the shortage for call center employees—people with good command over English and other foreign languages.
Manuel D’Souza, Executive VP, HR, Intelenet Global Services, explained, “The Indian BPO industry has evolved drastically in the last seven years. In 1999, when the BPO boom had just taken off, voice-related services dominated the Indian BPO industry. However, seven years down the line, the share of voice process has reduced owing to the industry’s transition to higher value-added activities. These include feature-rich and non-voice transactions such as invoice processing, and company and equity research.”
Careers in training and development, personality development experts, communication and language specialists, quality management, the HR function, finance, banking and operations, analysts, sales and marketing, subject matter experts, well, BPOs have opened up a whole new set of avenues for people to envisage and explore. Tim Huiting, VP, HR, Convergys, listed down few of the career options:
- Operations management
- Quality control and assurance
- Business development
- Project management and process migration
- Client services and account management
- Training and development
- Human resource management
- Finance and accounts
- Information technology and systems
- Facilities and infrastructure management
Sanjiv Kapur, Senior VP and Head, Patni BPO, added, “Today BPO is an industry of choice both for young and experienced professionals as well as seasoned experts from unconventional fields like MBBS, pharmacy, actuarial science, Japa-nese language professionals, etc.”
Professional experts in any field, not restricted to the work purview alone, ranging from yoga gurus to dieticians to counselors to gym specialists, all are employed by BPOs as an add-on, to combat and weed out any form of employee stress. Strict quality control measures like Six Sigma and Kaizen, adoption of global standards and best practices, a keen focus on time management and stress management, acknowledging and emphasizing on team work, cultural integration, etc., have given a boost to this industry, and an impetus to people working therein.
Malini Gupta, Senior VP, InfoVision, felt that there has been a shift from primarily hiring freshers to a more mature approach attracting talent with years of experience in industries such as hospitality and sales teams across various verticals. She opined that fast paced growth, opportunity to work for leading brands, interaction with people across the globe and excellent work environment with people-focused practices, assist people to stay in the business for long.
Pay and perks
Pay and perks have never been an issue in this industry. Even under-graduates join in with salaries running into lakhs annually, plus additional attractions like joining bonuses, which in itself is a sufficiently large amount for the 10th and 12th pass students. Excellent business standards and world-class working environment, bonus and incentives, constant recognition and rewards, periodical plans for fun and outing, ESOPS, the BPO sector is buzzing and booming. Enormous pack packages and excellent perks, with a new work-area definition replacing the archaic model, for employees, seem to balance it out to sustain and withstand the high-pressured, stressful working zone. Sandeep Soni, ED and CEO, Spanco, reiterated, “The industry is a step ahead for education where even a graduate can join a BPO as the front-end workforce. Excellent, rewarding, open and transparent working environment, transport facility, attractive lifestyle, medical insurance coverage, performance based incentives, recreation, cafeteria, concierge facilities, regular get-togethers and other cultural programmes are just a few examples that the BPO industry offers to an individual.”
Kapur opined that innovative strategies like Bank@Patni enable financial stability and growth for Patni BPO employees. Under this programme, an employee below assistant manager level contributes a certain amount and Patni contributes a higher amount to the kitty. Within a period of three years, an employee can get more than double the amount that he/she contributed. The payouts happen every year.
Aniruddha Limaye, Chief People Officer, WNS Global Services, felt that focus on verticalization gave employees a deep knowledge of the domain, as also making them well-versed with the industry practices. People working with WNS thus get an opportunity to be part of industry verticals like travel or BFSI rather than being positioned as just having a BPO career. He outlined several factors that helped people to stay secure in the challenging, demanding and competitive workplace:
- Challenging work since you get an opportunity to work on various projects, each with its own unique business challenge and complexity
- Global roles—as BPO companies expand globally, it is creating global roles for employees
- Opportunity to work on big global brands
- Training and development on a continuous basis
- Nascent and fast growing industry that offers an excellent opportunity for growth and a challenging entrepreneurial environment
- Young and energetic environment where a person can grow to full potential
Climbing up the ladder
Just like multiple career opportunities are at bay, individuals careers are given due importance. KRAs and performance linked to aptitude and role, regular feedback sessions, constant monitoring and reviewing of goals, changing role and job rotation or vertical progression in the hierarchical ladder, both inviting and testing newer skill-sets and attributes, BPOs are engaged in retaining the workforce and augmenting the working span of employees.
Spanco has a career progression model for their front-end workforce, which ensures that whenever they have a position available in the non-operations functions, preference is given to the talent available internally within the organization, known as Internal Job Postings (IJP). They ensure that each and every employee has undergone a minimum of 60 hours of training in a calendar year and the same is linked with employees’ self development KRAs at the time of performance appraisal reviews.
Keane has a dedicated department called RCM (Roles and Career Management) that develops a customized career plan for each individual based on their aspirations, skills, capabilities and company’s vision. RCM then plans out the rotation of each employee within the different processes so that they get a well rounded aspect of the business and at the same time avoid monotony.
An Intelenet, an employee undergoes training programmes such as LEAD, GROWTH, and STEP to overcome the existing weaknesses and hone their skills. 80% to 90% of the promotions to team leaders and team managers happen through these programmes.
Pawan Sharma, President, KPIT Cummins Global Business Solutions (GBS), explained that the three parameters that were considered while hiring a candidate would be—educational qualification, skills they have, and the experience they carry.
The competency-based matrix and the profile formed would be based on the job, which will take the employee ability, aspiration and interest into consideration.
Sharma also sighted examples where the traditional convention no longer holds true and where employees prefer to work night shifts, so that they can assume their personal responsibilities during the day.
BPOs have thus opened up the job market and provided employment opportunities to people who otherwise would not have made it without a degree or a qualification. Similarly, it has definitely given mobility to the middle class income group who would have earlier never dreamt of earning big bucks, and climbing up the status ladder. With pros and cons in every field, let us just hope that the pros outweigh the negativity here.
all about self confidence
How to develop your power of self-confidence
Tips to enhance your self-confidence
Develop self-confidence through rehearsal
Face criticism and gain emotional maturity
Do not compare yourself with others
Starting with the belief that success is possible for everyone, Shishir Srivastava's book The Eight Powers Within You: Your Guide to Success shows how you can develop your latent powers and move in the direction of your goals, both at home and at work.
After serving in the Indian Navy for four years, Srivastava decided his calling lay elsewhere. Since then the Lucknow-based motivational speaker has been associated with City Montessori School in Lucknow where he heads the Department of Personality Development and Career Counselling.
This is his first book. We bring you an excerpt from Chapter Seven, The Power of Self-Confidence.
Self-limiting beliefs are among the biggest obstacles to building self-confidence. You must try to get rid of the false notions you have been holding about yourself in your brain. To do this, you must write down the different beliefs that affect your performance and ask yourself: 'Is this attitude justified? Is it true about myself? What can I do to change it?'
When you analyse your self-limiting beliefs and ask self-empowering questions of yourself, you will find that most of your beliefs are false. Knowing this, you can adopt a new belief system that is self-empowering and enriching.
When you do this, you will realise that all your beliefs are a choice and what stands between you and your accomplishments is the will to take the first step and the belief that it is possible for you to reach the great heights of achievement.
Image: Book Cover: The Eight Powers Within You
Photographs: Penguin Books India
Tips to enhance your self-confidence
Develop self-confidence through rehearsal
Face criticism and gain emotional maturity
Do not compare yourself with others
Develop your self-esteem
Self-esteem is the opinion you have about yourself. It greatly influences you each time you go out to perform. The higher your self-esteem, the better your performance at work. Self-esteem and self-confidence have a direct correlation. One of the first steps to take when you want to build self-confidence is to like yourself. When you develop admiration for yourself, your self-respect and confidence level go up. Start saying to yourself from today, 'I like myself, I like myself, I like myself.'
Your self-esteem plays a major role even in your interactions with others. While dealing with other people, constantly remind yourself, 'I am as portent as you are and you are as important as I am.' When you repeat this affirmation, your self-esteem and self-confidence are enhanced. When this happens, your chances of success in relationships increase. There is a direct correlation between the amount of self-respect you have and the respect others have for you.
How to gain instant self-confidence
Getting over difficult situations is not always easy. Our brain tends to lock in memories when an event causes negative emotions. These strong emotions return when things go bad. Surely you remember forgetting a line in a poem when you were young or being pointed at when you didn't complete your homework. But you had a lot of successes too -- and they were just as important.
The problem is that focusing on failures tends to lower self-confidence and lets you down. So you must recall your triumphs. Maintain a victory log. Instead of recalling your failures, summon up the instances where you did well. Each day write down one or two successes that you have had. Regularly feed your victory log and refer to it when you feel low. A look at it will boost your self-confidence.
Image: Author Shishir Srivastava
Photographs: Shishir Srivastava
Develop self-confidence through rehearsal
Face criticism and gain emotional maturity
Do not compare yourself with others
Be it an interview, an examination, an instance of public speaking or anything else, you can 'feel' the situation you are about to face -- and, more important, prepare yourself for it -- beforehand. The more you put yourself in real-life situations, the more your confidence will grow and the better your performance will be. So practice, practice, practice and your self-confidence will get a boost.
Focus on your strengths
You are a born to excel in something. The best way to identify your ability is to put yourself in different situations. Then see what you like doing the most, what you can do with natural ease. Once you discover your innate talent, you must devote a great amount of time to working hard and trying to become the best in your chosen field. This will increase your confidence tremendously.
Learn to overcome your fears
Have the firm belief that you have the ability and strength to overcome your fears. Remember, fear is a state of mind. You may fear doing something but many others around you do the same thing with natural ease. Some of them would have started out with fear in their mind, just like you. These people should be an inspiration to you. To overcome your fears, you must choose to take small but consistent steps in the direction of what you fear doing.
When you do a bit of what you fear, your confidence gets a boost. Suppose you have never been on stage and have a fear of speaking in public. You can begin by learning a few lines from a poem that you like. Practise speaking the lines aloud in a room, in front of a mirror, and later on an empty stage (with no audience at all). This step-by-step process will bolster your faith in yourself. Slowly, you will reach a stage where you will be speaking in front of an audience with little or no fear at all.
Photographs: Dominic Xavier
Face criticism and gain emotional maturity
Do not compare yourself with others
As you begin to raise your standards, you will often face criticism from co-workers and even from those you do not know. At such a time, remind yourself that what people think of you has no impact whatsoever on your career and that it cannot affect you until you yourself allow it to do so. What truly matters for your progress is the opinion you have about yourself. You must learn to handle criticism with grace and a smile, not with fear and frustration. Always think positively and remember that any criticism is better handled with a smile and emotional maturity than with a frown and a retort.
Learn to handle failure
There will be times when you will fail to achieve your goal. In such a situation you should recognise that failure is never final. You must use it to enrich your experience and learn from your mistakes. Have faith in the future and believe that everything will finally be all right. This belief will keep your spirits up and not let failure affect you.
Motivate yourself by doing small things
When you start taking smart steps consistently, your confidence level will go up. You will feel livelier, walk faster, talk louder and speak with more confidence. When such things happen, do remember to give yourself a pat on the back.
Photographs: Uttam Ghosh
Do not compare yourself with others
You are a unique person. If you compare yourself with others, you actually show lack of respect for yourself. Instead, learn to compare yourself with yourself -- that is, the kind of person you are now and the kind of person you wish to be.
To become the person you would like to be, you must compete with yourself. Each time you do something good, reward yourself. Thereafter, challenge yourself to improve your next performance and start preparing. Each time you focus on improving your performance -- retaining the things you did right, rejecting those you did wrong -- your self-confidence will grow.
'Your biggest competition is yourself' -- Shishir Srivastava
Photographs: Uttam Ghosh
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)