What are the opportunities in the call centre space?
The opportunities in terms of sheer revenues as per the Nasscom-MicKinsey report in the region of $7 billion by 2008. If India puts into place the building blocks like telecom infrastructure then India could takes its place as the hub for outsourcing of IT-enabled services.

The current situation also offers us an immense opportunity to make use of graduate-level educated people who have not had a career for some reasons. One has the opportunity to build those campus-style people factories, wherein one desk-space can be leveraged thrice a day. Further, it is also a great leveller wherein the skill-sets required not above those of base-level graduates.

What are the challenges in this space?
First and foremost is the quality issue. Delivering consistent quality 24x7 hours over 365 days to your customers is a tough proposition. Telecom infrastructure and red tape is another. Sales and marketing in the US market is an important issue, wherein the Indian call centres should be able to pitch for Fortune 500 clients directly, not through an agent or a sub-contractor. In the software side, the companies that have become success stories are the ones which have managed to have this side in place. To steer clear of the `low cost, low quality' branding, there needs to be clarity in the domain processes and expertise. One cannot sell diapers and computers from the same call centre. Right now, the danger is that there are too many people with little expertise and inadequate financial backing entering the market. In this business, the size does matter, because the cost and the revenue per seat for low-seat capacity call centre become viable only with size.

Are there any policy or funding issues that are of concern?
The call centre business does not favour the debt route very much, because in the first 18-24 months there are no revenues to service the debt. Hence, the equity route is much better. However, the VCs are very selective about funding the IT-enabled services. Hence, typically funding is an issue. As far as policy is concerned, the government should treat this industry at par with software and give tax holidays, because the break-even points are not very close. Further, the availability of bandwidth is a constraint. So are the redundancy levels of infrastructure.

What are the people's issues confronting the industry?
This industry is not based on technology. It depends on people, processes and only then technology. Since, it is a very monotonous job, hence there is a very high level of churn out in this industry, about 30 per cent. This a special issue in the Indian market, because there are associated costs of training.

What are the opportunities in the sector for training?
The training costs are immense and specifically in the Indian context training of the call-centre industry is a bigger business opportunity than the call centre industry itself. There are usually three types of training -skill-based, phonetics-based and process-based. While the last is usually taken care off after the contract is signed, the first two are the critical areas in the Indian context. Skill-based training is the elementary communication skills, whereas the phonetics-based training requires that the person occupying the seat speaks to the customer at the end of the line in his accent. For the phonetics-based training, a week to 10 days of training to cost around 10-12,000. These costs add to the overall cost per seat. Hence, the estimated revenue per seat also works out higher.