Forget Plain Offshoring, ready for Rural-Offshoring ?
Bangalore’s IT growth and the associated fame is widely unquestioned. Bangalore and it’s eponymous ‘Bangalored’ gets recognized far beyond the shores of India. With Bangalore as the vanguard, the Indian IT industry strode to USD $50 billion in software exports in 2009.
The global economic meltdown did dampen the profits a bit but has not led to any major scare — sans the routine cuts and restructurings. Indian metros have seen greater prosperity due to IT but so far this has passed the rural areas by.
A few entrepreneurs are attempting to bring the benefits of computer technology to rural India and bridging the digital divide..
Consider this :
When Bangalore outsources to Bagepalli
Run by a company called RuralShores, the modest brick-and-concrete structure stands a hundred meters off the highway, a surreal setting for a BPO. Outsourcing looks set to cascade into rural India ?
The months-old Bagepalli centre is a three-room affair equipped with a dozen ceiling fans whirring at full speed. The power supply here is stop-go, so each of the rows of computers is equipped with its own battery back-up. The office has no air-conditioning, cafeteria or soda vending machines..
Bagepalli is the first of 500 such centers that RuralShores plans to set up in the next five years. Each will have 150-200 employees that will eventually total 75,000 jobs.
More on the success of BPOs in rural India
- HDFC Bank set up its first rural BPO at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. Set up by ADFC, the bank’s subsidiary, the BPO will employ 1,500 people from nearby villages by March, thus becoming the country’s largest rural BPO in the banking sector.
- Tata Chemicals, for example. In October this year, the company set up a 125-seat BPO – titled Uday – at Babrala in Uttar Pradesh, close to the company’s plant. It functions as the back-office support for group firm Tata Indicom’s customers in the state.
- SourcePilani, a rural BPO set up in September 2007 with support from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. SourcePilani gets villagers to do medical transcription (conversion of medical prescriptions from audio to text format) work through customized training modules and estimates that each job created by it generates as much revenue as can be got from cultivating five acres of land in Rajasthan.
- Satyam Computers, is a pioneer of sorts in India’s rural BPO saga. Raju has initiated a project called GramIT, under which his family philanthropy, the Byrraju Foundation, bears the startup costs of setting up data processing centers in remote villages of Andhra Pradesh to do HR and accounting back-office work for Satyam.
Will it work ? Is it a sane thing to do ? Is the risk associated with it worth the infamy it may bring if it fails ?
Consider these about Rural-BPO :
- It does not need an engineering degree to front simplistic calls, do data-entry or medical transcription. Remember Jamal Malik from Slumdog Millionaire ?
- It helps spread the IT riches and hopefully bring some parity to the urban-rural inequality.
- If could be a lot more cheaper — no vending machines, no cabs, no air-conditioning et al.
- It could save cities being flooded with job-seekers — a sustainable means available near home could thwart a futile migration to the cities
- Rs. 4000/- is higher than what a Preuniversity fail in a rural setting could hope.
- The attrition rate of 4% dwarfs when compared to the 30-40 % in the urban cities
- Real estate costs are a fraction of what it would cost in the city.
A Rural-BPO catering to a global MNC may not be a good idea.
There’s only so much you can push the Rural-BPO. Despite the English medium schooling and science degrees, a major complaint from overseas on BPOs is ‘ I cannot understand what he says..’. Now add a rural Pre-University fail to the mix and you can see what it would do to the customer experience. If data security is an issue in the BPOs of Bangalore one can only imagine the repercussions in a battery backed up facility where attendance is often spotty. Can a modest rural set-up be hedged, equipped enough to keep going when a natural disaster strikes ? Flooded Mumbai gets back to normal in a matter of days while a flooded north Karnataka languishes for weeks ; a blown-up transformer will black-out villages for days.
But there’s still hope when done right and used for Indian companies that are not as stringent and understand the terms of the terrain better. And when it works, it melts the hearts of even the staunchest critics…
Neelam Saini, 18, has been with Source for Change for 18 months. “I joined after class 10,” she says. “We are four girls and two boys. I am the oldest. My father – a farmer – said he could not afford to educate us beyond class 10.”
Now a confident Saini says she intends to keep working and study further.
“Earlier I used to feel that since I am 10th class pass there is nothing much that I can do. But after working here I feel I can do many things. I have filled the admission form for class 12, and intend to take that exam next year as a private student,” she explains.
Are her parents proud of her? They are “very proud of me,” she says, a wide grin on her face. “Also,” she adds in a serious voice, “because I am working my siblings will also be able to study further.”
More at : http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47074
If a girl who had given up her plans of college not only can pursure it but can also dream a similar dream for her siblings while making her parents proud, what’ snot to like about it ? Add to that she is streghtening the nation by being an independent woman…
Consider this from another Rural-BPO employee :
“No, Ma’am. I will not give any dowry when I get married,” Chandrika says (More here..)
What do you think ?
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