Wanted! Regional language speakers for BPOs

Wanted! Regional language speakers for BPOs

Priyanka Golikeri/ DNA MONEY
Tuesday, 15 July , 2008, 08:34

Tucked away in a narrow lane off SV Road in Goregaon in a three-storey cream-coloured building is a 950-sq ft business process outsourcing (BPO) unit.

A spacious room in the building is filled with eight bays-files, computers, and knick-knacks on each of the 64 desks.

The 256-odd employees are busy replying to customer calls. But instead of speaking English in the much-ridiculed firang accent, they are actually interacting with customers in India's regional languages. The buzz in the room is a mix of Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese and Oriya.

This BPO unit is no pathbreaker. It is one among many that are now looking at tapping the domestic market, thereby opening career doors for millions of educated Indians from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Take the case of 20-year-old R Rukmini. The bespectacled, gangly second-year arts student works in a BPO in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. For a monthly salary of Rs 8,500, Rukmini spends her evenings Monday to Friday taking customer calls, expertly balancing her work with studies.

But before she joined here, Rukmini was worried about the restrictions her Tamil-based education placed on her job prospects. She thought she would have to go for extra coaching to polish her rudimentary English and become employable.

Soothing her worries, the domestic BPO gave her the opportunity to build a career in the language that she has been familiar with for the last 14-15 years of her life. Till recently, fluent English was required for a decent call centre job. Those with fluency in foreign languages such as French, German, Korean and Spanish, among others, were in greater demand. Much has changed, with the BPO industry, growing at 35-40% annually, now taking seriously the 15 Indian languages printed on any Rs 100 note.

Driving this trend is a surge in sectors such as telecom, banking, insurance, financial services, and retail, which are the top clients of domestic BPOs.

N K Srikanth, the head of operations at domestic BPO MphasiS, says the telecom industry adds millions of subscribers annually. "These companies need people proficient in local languages to deal with customers across regions within India. So the demand for people well-versed in regional languages is increasing," he adds.

Customers from non-urban areas prefer speaking in their local language, points out Radhika Balasubramanian, the chief operating officer (domestic BPO), Intelenet Global Services. "People fluent in regional languages ensure a better rapport with customers." Intelenet has about 15,000 employees in 13 centres. Estimated at $1.6 billion, the domestic BPO market has over 50 big and small players. It employs more than 5 lakh people, a workforce that the industry experts see swelling by at least 50% annually in the near future as domestic BPO players are fast expanding their base.

The $200 million Aegis Services BPO, which has nine centres, is planning three to four new units annually in the next few years. Managing director and chief executive Aparup Sengupta expects the company's client base of 78 to grow at 30-40% every year. "This means a monthly addition of an average of 500 people to our employee base of 16,000," he says.

This fiscal, Infovision Group would add about 5,000 people to its workforce of 10,500. According to founder and MD Aditya Gupta, this fiscal, the company would add four new centres to the existing 23.

MphasiS, which has 7,000 employees, would grow its workforce by 50% annually over the next few years, says Srikanth. "We have six centres, and will add more in tier-III areas such as Indore, Bellary and Hubli in Karnataka."

This means opportunities for regional language speakers with minimum 10+2 education and basic English and computer skills in tier-III and IV towns. Srikanth says that as much as 40% of its employees are non-graduates, mostly from non-English backgrounds.

The catch, however, is that these regional language-speaking employees get lower salaries compared to their English-speaking counterparts. The billing rate for domestic clients is about 20% lower than that for international clients, says Infovision's Gupta. "Hence, the salaries of employees servicing domestic clients are 20-40% lower than those who service international clients."

Not that the employees are complaining. A starting salary of Rs 7,000-10,500 for customer service executives in domestic BPOs is no chickenfeed.

`Tear` II cities: No frills, no thrills, moan BPO staff

`Tear` II cities: No frills, no thrills, moan BPO staff

Rakesh Prakash / Chennai/ Bangalore July 14, 2008, 0:41 IST

Lack of malls, multiplexes and other social infrastructure stall advent of the BPO wave into tier II, III cities

When 26-year-old Nirup was asked by his company to get ready for a stint in Hubli-Dharwad, he decided to hunt for a new job.

"What can I do in Hubli after office hours or during weekends? If I remain in Bangalore, I can spend time visiting shopping malls, multiplexes and pubs," Nirup explained to Business Standard while insisting that the BPO he currently works for in Bangalore should not be named.

Nirup's is not an isolated case, there are several others of his ilk who are not keen on shifting to tier II and tier III cities for lack of a proper social infrastructure like shopping and entertainment facilities.

Though BPO companies have the first-mover advantage while acquiring land in these tier II and III cities, industry experts admit the biggest challenge is attracting skilled employees to these locations.

At present, the total direct employment provided by India's IT-BPO sector is 2 million, of which over 90 per cent is captured by the seven leading cities of Bangalore, Mumbai, NCR, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata. According to the recent Nasscom-A T Kearney study on `location road map for IT-BPO growth', the share of sectoral employment in the top seven locations will decline to around 60-75 per cent over the next decade and that will subsequently result in the rise of tier II and tier III cities'.

"But that cannot be achieved by only installing physical infrastructure like power lines and mass-transport system in tier II and tier III cities. Efforts should also be made to create an ecosystem that comprises social infrastructure with the trappings of metropolitan life," contended Saurine M Doshi, partner A T Kearney India. In fact, the Nasscom-A T Kearney assessment of 50 leading locations for IT-BPO sector had pointed out that a lack of recreational facilities was also a handicap for the tier-II and III cities.

For instance: while cities like Mangalore and Hubli-Dharwad were favoured by companies in terms of cost advantage, they fared badly in terms of social environment and location attractiveness. Though Hubli-Dharwad got an IT park a few years ago, it failed to make an impact because of the lack of social infrastructure. Youngsters who hail from that region prefer to enjoy modern lifestyle in Bangalore than lead a ‘no-frills life' there.

It is a problem faced by the industry across the country, said H R Binod, Infosys senior vice president (commercial and facilities). In fact, when Infosys started a unit in Chandigarh, young employees complained there were no good pubs in the city and instead preferred to work in Bangalore, Binod recalled at the recent BPO Strategy Summit organised by Nasscom.

This apart, another major challenge faced in tier II and III cities, according to Binod, is with regard to spouse employability. While the seven leading locations provide job options for the spouses of IT-BPO employees, it is not the same with the smaller cities.

The IT-BPO industry has requested the government to create a clear plug-and-play environment in the smaller cities and to improve competitiveness among them, besides asking real-estate players to take note of the industry's requirements in these cities. "If there are enough facilities in the smaller towns, it will surely attract both skilled employees and new clients.

Not just good access roads and class hotels, care should be taken to construct enough studio apartments for bachelors," Binod suggested. Dubbing the lack of recreational avenues as a dampener, Binod suggested the realtors to study the Manila set-up where BPOs operate from shopping malls.

For the realtors, it has turned out to be a catch-22 situation. "What if we spruce up the place by investing crores of rupees and the IT-BPO companies don't come there?" a prominent builder from Hyderabad asked.

In fact, a lot of real-estate players have begun to attend Nasscom summits and other IT conferences across the country these days to understand what the IT-BPO industry wants and how serious it is. While the realtors debate, the Union government has been talking about a panacea in the form of IT Investment Regions (ITIRs), which are integrated IT townships.

Coming: New Industrial Policy policy

Coming: New Industrial Policy

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Dharwad: The government will soon evolve a new industrial policy to boost industrial development in areas other than Bangalore.
   Speaking to TOI, major and medium industries minister Murugesh Nirani said there has been good response from the industrialists to set up industries in North Karnataka. “Sixty-five projects, each worth Rs 50 crore, have been submitted to the government. We will soon convene a meeting of prospective investors and discuss the matter,” Nirani said.
   Stating that Hubli-Dharwad will be developed as a special zone for the automobile industry, Nirani said Bijapur-Davanagere would be developed as a food-processing industry zone while Gulbarga and Bagalkot will have cement industries. Bellary will be developed as a steel zone.
   He said the new policy will emphasize on decentralization of industrial growth. The industries will be asked to be self-reliant as far as water supply is concerned. They have to provide employment to the localites. Nirani said the government is ready to provide necessary facilities to the entrepreneurs to set up units. Barren and uncultivated land would be used for setting them up. “However, if they do not set up the industries after being allotted the land by Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board within three years, the land will be handed over to the farmers to whom it belonged earlier.”
   Nirani, who is an engineer and an industrialist, said: “I am running industrial units in backward areas of Bagalkot district. I know the difficulties being faced by the entrepreneurs. The new policy would provide remedies to all such problems.”