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Finding a new calling

Bipin Chandran

Aren't call centres supposed to be sweatshops where thousands of fresh-out-of-college graduates slave at the end of a phone line? Then, why has Spectramind, one of India's fastest growing call centres, just hired a clutch of microbiologists with doctorates in their field?

The answer is that the Indian microbiologists are helping scientists across the world to cut their workload by accessing information and collecting data at high speed.

Indian call centres are moving quickly up the value chain. They started out by handling plain vanilla phone calls for information or reservations. But now they are looking at outsourcing high-end work in fields like design, human resource development and even accounting.

Take a look at HCL eServe, the IT-enabled services company promoted by technology czar Shiv Nadar. The HCL Group company is armed with a $40 million war chest and it is about to buy two companies in the United States. One is an accounting company and the other is involved in human relations management.

How will these acquisitions help to build eServe's global business? It will use its Indian operations and outsource the entire accounting and HR requirements of global firms.

"India has high quality accountants who can be trained in the US GAAP accounting practices in a fortnight. We can then handle the entire accounting process of global majors from here at much cheaper rates than those of other global accounting firms," says Sujit Baksi, chief executive officer HCL eServe. The company has similar plans in human relations.

Or, look at how Spectramind is moving into more complex work. The company is now working against the clock to establish a "knowledge centre" that will act as a back up for an American company.

Spectramind's Indian operations will do research and verify developments in the areas of genetics and biochemistry. "The centre is responsible for creating, maintaining and verifying a database of all developments and research published worldwide in this area," says Raman Roy, CEO and president, Spectramind.

How much business will come from this thrust into more specialised sectors? HCL eServe believes that its push into high-end services will help it to contribute as much as 25 per cent to 30 per cent to parent company HCL Technologies in the next four years.

"Indian companies started as just vanilla telephone call answering companies. But now they have realised that they can only survive by finding a niche for themselves. They can do it only if they move the value chain," says Sunil Mehta, vice president, Nasscom.

Spectramind and eServe aren't the only ones that are looking at more sophisticated services and newer, more specialised clients. Progeon, the Infosys and Citigroup joint initiative in the IT-enabled services area, is focusing initially on areas like transaction processing and accounting services.

"We will offer these services in multiple forms - as business process re-engineering, shared services platform and business intelligence services in addition to the obvious cost advantage of doing the work from India," says Phaneesh Murthy, member of the board and head, sales and marketing, Infosys.

Progeon will ride on the Infosys legacy and will offer clients a complete cost-effective solution based on service and technology outsourcing. "The practices we have put in place will enable client processes to be transitioned and executed smoothly. This will also be part of Infosys initiative to provide total solutions to its clients," Murthy said.

The fact is that nearly all the successful IT-enabled service companies are making moves to climb the value chain. Look at Daksh eService, the Delhi-based call centre company backed by Amazon.com. Daksh has decided to concentrate on financial services and the telecom sector as a part of its strategy to carve out a niche for itself.

Inevitably, the changing focus of all these companies is also forcing them to change recruitment policies. Daksh, for instance, is looking to hire larger numbers of experienced professionals for its new services. "We are not ready to just recruit anyone. We will want people with required experience in specific areas," says Sanjeev Aggarwal, CEO, Daksh.

"Today 100 people walk in and only two get hired. This is quite contrary to what it was some time back, when it was considered as a place for anyone," he says.

Other newer players are also entering the Indian market and they are looking at providing services with a slight difference. Take the British company Port@l Group. Port@l wants to operate a service called `central administration response'.

Basically, this involves setting up a pool of secretarial professionals in India for executives in global corporations around the world. That means that a letter dictated in Helsinki or Vancouver might be typed out by a secretary sitting in Delhi or Bangalore.

Port@l believes that this idea is ready for implementation. "The idea came from a project we were working on for Ericsson, where they tried to cut back costs and executives had to give up their secretaries," says Probir Dutt, chief technology officer, Port@l Group.

The company also plans to introduce a service called fast information via air (FIONA) from India. Under this model a user can send a query as an SMS to a central site.

That will then be forwarded to a team in India which will provide the answer. For example, a businessman in Spain who is using a taxi might need help explaining where he wants to go. He can do this by dialling the call centre in India and asking the agents to give the driver the necessary instructions.

Port@l, however, will be functioning differently from other call centres. It conducted an extensive survey of the Indian market recently, which revealed that there is a huge amount of unutilised capacity with some of the smaller players in the industry.

What's more, Port@l's research also showed that the Indian companies had state-of-the-art equipment that could be compared with the best in the world. So, it is leasing space from these companies and it won't be investing in building its own centres.

"We have found that there is excess capacity in the Indian market. Therefore, it does not make any sense to start another call centre. We have decided to lease out capacity from companies and start our centres there," says Dutt.

The winds of war have thrown a slight scare into the Indian IT-enabled services industry. But these companies started looking into the future a long time ago and they are moving quickly to ensure that they stay in front against competitors from all corners of the globe.

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