‘I would like to go where no one has gone before’

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: It is on the third floor of the spawning Genpact complex that Pramod Bhasin’s office is. Manoeuvring through the many cubicles (done in all colours), one reaches the corner, all-glass cabin of Bhasin— president and CEO. The room is sober and simple, quite a contrast to the rest of the surroundings. Between talks, Bhasin repeatedly looks out towards the wide expanses of Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi, ahead and down under. “When we started here, nothing existed.” He adds ‘literally’ and repeats the statement for emphasis. “We came here in 1996-97 and since then it has taken off,” he says. Now, that’s in no way an arrogant statement, for it’s coming from the country’s Mr BPO (as Bhasin is referred to, often).

For the uninitiated, Bhasin is credited with pioneering the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) boom in the country along with Raman Roy. But, his sense of pride goes beyond just that.

“It has been an incredible journey, more because it has unleashed an industry in developing nations, which has the power to employ millions and is driving the consumer boom in India,” says the head of Genpact, which has just turned ten.

Ask him if all this was part of a grand vision and he laughs. “I wasn’t very ambitious that you would imagine someone like me would be. Ambition came late in life for me.” Having spent 25 years outside India spearheading various divisions of GE, Bhasin wanted to return to his country, which was in the midst of reforms. “I was tired of being a foreigner. Moreover, I wanted my daughter to grow up here. So, it was more mundane than grand vision.”

Back to India, Bhasin had a rendezvous with the harsh realities of the country, “We built an excellent team and I felt constantly frustrated by regulations that wouldn’t allow you to build your business the way you wanted to,” he says.

For a moment, his vision again drifts to the road below, but he returns quickly and says that the idea came more out of necessity as “we wanted to be in a market, which is global, not impacted by local ups and downs, every quarter. ”