Bharat, the newest playground for BPOs

You might have never heard of Amargol, Mallasamudram, Teekli, Aklimpur, Daari, Chirawa, Manjakkudi and Kaup. Locating them on the India map would probably require a microscope. Nonetheless, these tiny hamlets in the interiors of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Haryana and Tamil Nadu are becoming the newest hubs for business process outsourcing (BPO) companies.

Not only are BPOs finding good business opportunities in these villages, but the jobs they are generating are of immense value for the locals, who otherwise would have had to squeeze themselves into cities.

Take Rekha Verma. The young woman from Pilani in Rajasthan works as a team leader in the BPO unit of HarVa, a rural organisation, from 7 in the morning to mid-afternoon. Her work focuses on data entry and handling calls, fetching her Rs7,000-8,000 per month. Despite her graduation, her family would not have allowed her to go outside of Pilani and seek work.

“My parents allowed only because the office is within Pilani, about 4 km from home and has an all-women environment. There are no proper jobs for women in Pilani and hence most stay at home. I have been very lucky,” says Verma, who has been with the BPO since 2009, adding she has become independent and confident.

On the other hand, the money Sreedevi Meduri earns after working 9-5 in a BPO near Tirupati, handling customer calls, helps in supporting her family of five, where she is the only breadwinner.

“My siblings are studying while my father is a retired military man. So my income is a big boon for my family. Moreover since the job is close by, I don’t have to travel much,” says Meduri, who has been working with the BPO of HDFC Bank since 10 months.

“The rural youth, who come from families which are into weaving, farming, cattle rearing and carpentry, are equally talent. It’s just that they don’t get the exposure of city youth. So creating jobs there would not just tap their potential, but also gives us a new pool of talent,” says A Rajan, group head, HDFC Bank.

On the other hand, rural BPOs mean less costs, compared to their urban counterparts.

There are no large food courts and transportation facilities; unlike urban BPOs, says Saloni Malhotra, founder and CEO of DesiCrew Solutions, a rural BPO incubated by IIT Madras.

Moreover, the realty and salary costs are lower. Average salaries in rural BPOs range Rs4,000-8,000 per month, comparatively lower than in cities.

“Also the attrition is in single digits. Our employees stay for at least 6-7 years,” says Swapna Mishra, assistant VP, Drishtee, a social enterprise.

In metros, attrition ranges 25-35% annually.

“With employees displaying higher retention, operating in small towns translates to low cost of training and hiring,” says Sanjay Venkataraman, executive VP & head, Asia business unit, Firstsource.

In the interiors, BPOs are scouting for people with basic education to those with graduation and post graduation like Meduri who has the dual degrees of M.Sc and B.Ed.

“Ours is a women-only BPO and we employ even those who are class eight pass,” says Ajay Chaturvedi, founder and chairman of HarVa.

According to Malhotra, the employee base is a mix of graduates, MBAs and MCAs.

While Bangalore-based NextWealth Entrepreneurs even has engineers at its rural BPOs, according to Mythily Ramesh, CEO and co-founder.

Experts say the nature of jobs undertaken in a rural BPO ranges from data entry to backend processing, content creation to coding and billing.

The BPOs boast of clients such as insurance firms, farming firms, media and internet companies.

“We are also trying to get legal and analytical work related projects as our employees are talented. The work generally goes on in English, Hindi and vernacular languages,” says Ramesh.

Like BPOs elsewhere, those in the interiors also engage in extensive training of new recruits. Wipro BPO which recently started a rural centre, is providing training which is standardised across all centres irrespective of their locations, says Manish Dugar, senior VP & global head.

DesiCrew’s Malhotra says they have a 3-month programme called D-Touch to train recruits in English, computers, personality as well as dealing with customers and clients.

HDFC Bank’s Rajan says they train employees for about 4-5 months in banking processes as well as computers. “Many are not familiar with the keyboard. So the training is from scratch.”
Verma says she received a 15-day training on typing, email, internet, excel, sending files, and communication.

 However, despite all the positives, rural BPOs are a challenging proposition with several bottlenecks. Firstly, there are infrastructure roadblocks in the hinterlands like no proper telecom connectivity, roads, etc, says Dugar. “We had to set up the technology there, ensure broadband connectivity, install generators to take care of power failures, as well as move trainers from cities to train the staff,” says Rajan.

So though these BPOs might be saving on people costs, they have to make immense investment in infrastructure.

The second concern is getting clients. Drishtee’s Mishra says gaining client confidence is a tough task. “We have to convince them about our people. We started by offloading our own work to the BPO and then started roping in clients,” she says adding that only two years after the BPO started did they manage to get their first client.

Concerns notwithstanding, firms are gung-ho about the potential.
Anantha Radhakrishnan, VP and head, Infosys BPO, which is currently partnering with rural BPOs, says in future they will consider rural BPOs and see how the model works.