With huge wage costs and high attrition in urban India, the IT-enabled services industry is slowly turning to Bharat for salvation. Indeed, business process outsourcing (BPO) players that have initiated low-end transaction processing units say manpower in Tier-III townships could prove the answer to the sector?s problems.
Byrajju Foundation in Andhra Pradesh, for instance, employs 300 rural folk?40% of them married women?in three BPO units and plans to expand its workforce further. Its rural BPO wing, GramIT, recently won a three-week project from a British client, according to Byrajju promoter Verghese Jacob. ?If we do not catch the rural wave, India?s BPOs will go to low-cost neighbouring countries. There are at least three crore agriculture-dependant graduates in Indian villages that can be trained for BPO jobs,? he says.
Apex IT body Nasscom recently identified HR as a key challenge to the BPO sector, where attrition is as high as 60%. Non-urban centres save close to 25-30% in operational costs compared to urban facilities, as wages are typically 15-20% lower and attrition levels nominal. ?Employees in Tier-III towns are more committed to the company as it is difficult to find other jobs here,? says the head?rural BPO of Comat Technologies, Santosh Gurlahosur.
Comat offers cheque-processing transactions for Orbograph of the US and hires graduates who would otherwise remain unemployed in Mysore?s villages. The company runs 2,000 tele-centres across rural India and soon plans to offer medical transcription services from its ten facilities, Gurlahosur adds.
Investment advisory and management company Tholons Inc says some captive centres of global players are weighing the option of setting up BPO operations in Tier-III centres to serve the domestic market. ?International clients still prefer to outsource work to familiar locations in Indian cities,? says Tholons principal Vinu B Kartha.
VC networking company Venture Intelligence?s Arun Natarajan says though still just a trickle, rural BPOs would become attractive investment propositions for venture funds, as they mitigate the prime concerns of attrition and migration to choked Indian cities.