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BPO companies dot the skyline of Indias burgeoning metros with tall glass buildings and swanky interiors and an air accented with American vocabulary. Is there a true Indian BPO? The answer probably lies in the dusty villages of Krishnagiri district, in Tamil Nadu. With the efforts of then Krishnagiri collector and currently the MD of ELCOT, Dr Santhosh Babu has sowed the seeds of rural BPO in 2007, whose fruits are realized now. Quips Babu, Its a very unique initiative we have embarked together with Nasscom and Fostering Technologies in Rural Areas (FOSTeRA) is opening up new vistas for the rural youth. Our rural BPO which is done now through FOSTeRA is doing world class BPO work.

Today FOSTeRA is a sixty plus seater facility spread across Uthangari taluk and Hosur which comes under the Krishnagiri district. The BPO handles close to eight processes like, insurance, data conversion, voice (credit card collection), RPO, and other government related processes. Its got the US MNCs to domestic banks as its clients. According to Ashok Kumar, CEO, FOSTeRA, We have state-of-the-art data security methods and our agents converse in fluent English. We provide three months training and one month on-the-job training and put them in one of the processes. The success so far has defied our initial expectations and we are working aggressively to extend it across all villages of Tamil Nadu.

Innovative Model
FOSTeRAs success can well be measured by the industry accreditation its got already. When Microsoft sometime back did the pilot project on the online electoral roll registration, it used FOSTeRAs manpower. Says Ashok Kumar, The data entry skills of the employees are amazing and they are able to do large volumes of work with ease. Moreover, they are highly dedicated and work ethics is indeed very high.

FOSTeRA is indeed a disruptive development that has upped the career bar of the rural youth, who otherwise might have ended up in odd jobs in factories. ELCOT is playing an instrumental role in fostering the rural BPO both in terms of scale and size. Babu is aggressively working on making it a big success. ELCOT is encouraging the entrepreneurs in rural Tamil Nadu to start similar BPO ventures. The rural entrepreneurs will get the help from ELCOT as well as Nasscom in getting the projects to the rural BPO and the idea is to seed many initiatives like FOSTeRA across the state.

The subsequent rural BPO ventures would be lot easier to groom as FOSTeRA has created a working model. The model here is one of hub-and-spoke and Uttangari taluk acts as the hub. Here it will have maximum number of seats going forward. This hub would be connected to other taluks like Maganrpatti, Singarapettari, Samalpatti, Katteri, and Mitapalli. Kumar says, The number of seats is not an issue; we are training the manpower and scaling aggressively as per the demands.

Reaching the Rural Youth
As part of ELCOT and Nasscoms initiatives in setting up Finishing Schools in about twenty-nine districts in Tamil Nadu which has set the target to train more than 6,000 rural youth in English and other skills required for BPO kind of work. Right now ELCOT is working on these finishing schools and training the manpower.

Meanwhile FOSTeRA is aggressively working on adding more processes and expanding across Tamil Nadu and many leading BPOs have evinced interest in collaborating with FOSTeRA for tapping the rural potential. For instance, big BPOs are looking at tier-2 for their expansion plans and entities like FOSTeRA becomes an ideal partner for them to outsource certain work. And rural BPOs are also a boon for governments too, with governments doing a lot of data mining work for its internal projects now can outsource to agencies like FOSTeRA that would be cost-effective at the same time can get professional help as well. The business model that FOSTeRA has put in place is one that collaborates with large BPOs and acts as a third party player. It has also started getting projects on its own. In the last one year, FOSTeRA has done commendable work even on the voice front mainly on the credit card collections for a bank.

Looking at the way FOSTeRA has evolved in the last one year, it has managed the show pretty well so far. But some of the analysts point out that the government and the agencies involved has to move up fast in scaling. The finishing schools is a great initiative but even with the trained manpower, there is a dearth of entrepreneurs to invest in a rural BPO as they are worried about the long-term sustenance of these projects. Moreover, most of these projects are so tied up with one individualfor instance in the FOSTeRA case Babu was the key driver who made it happen by acting as the lobby with the government. But when the key architects leave, the continuity of the projects becomes an issue. e-Gov watchers argue that the government must put in place succession strategies so that knowledge intensive initiatives like the rural BPO projects will be seamlessly passed to successful incumbent irrespective of who started the project.

Outlook
At the end of the day, FOSTeRA has created a proof point that the rural youth with basic education can be molded into successful BPO employees. Its really a remarkable achievement when we look at how these people have accustomed themselves to modern technologies like VoIP, computer usage, and English speaking skills. But still its the tip of the iceberg and one needs hundred of FOSTeRAs to bridge the rural-urban divide in the real sense of the term.

Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in

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