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Aditya Birla Minacs : All in the Family

The company is busy revamping its brand after the recent name change

Dev Bhattacharya, CEO

While North America still remains the bread and butter for the company, Aditya Birla Minacs is one more giant which has started looking seriously at the local market in India to expand its business. While critics would harp on the fact that the client list mainly includes only other Aditya Birla group companies, the moot point remains that these are some of the biggest names in India Inc. And piggybacking on the parent group to grow its business is no crime.

Minacs has been doing domestic work mainly for the Aditya Birla group companies like Birla Sun Life Insurance and Idea Cellular With automotive being one of Minacs strongest verticals, and fears of US slowdown seeming to grip the automotives operations, there seems to be increased focus on domestic operations.

With a strength of over 4,500 people in the domestic operations and growing steadily, the company is well on track for making a headway in the local market. The major service lines have also diversified to include HR, administration, business and corporate research, document management, integrated marketing services, data management services, etc. Growing non-voice business in areas such as data analytics could be the next logical step for Minacs. With more than three-forth of the revenue coming from voice now, this could help in an image makeover from being a mere call center.

Aegis : M&A King

Aggressive movement on this front made it one of the names to reckon with in the domestic market

Aparup Sengupta, MD

Aegis made its domestic focus clear right from the beginning when it acquired Customer First.This gave access to southern and eastern India, and Orion Dialog provided inlet to the north Indian market. The acquisition of Gurgaon based Global Vantedge in February 2007, followed by the acquisition of Teletech Services India in November of the same year, emphasized its domestic ambitions. The same year saw Aegis buying Kolkata-based Stesalit Infotech, which added medical transcriptions to its domestic offerings.

The aggressive movement on the M&A front, positions Aegis as one of the strongest players in the domestic market, with a focus on both organic and inorganic growth. India gave Aegis three times more business in FY 08 as compared to the previous year. It now accounts for over Rs 820 crore out of the total annual revenue of around Rs1,330 crore.

Around 80% of the domestic operations are in the voice category. Aegis has also repositioned itself as an end-to-end customer lifecycle management company and a virtual retail player. The company sold insurance policies, banking products, etc, earning over Rs 2 crore per month and generating revenues of Rs 25 crore in the process. The pilot run was conducted in Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Kolkata and helped in enhancing its horizontal services.

Aegis also managed to cut down its attrition rate drastically by adopting an in-house curriculum called Aegisace.

Andromeda : Insuring Growth

Uniquely placed providing inbound and outbound services, the company recorded good growth

Elizabeth Jacob, Director

On the operations side, the company grew at 77% during FY 08. While other players swore by inbound customer care while doing telemarketing for clients, Andromeda continued to provide both inbound and outbound services.

The advantage of being a complete end-to-end player clearly reflected in the strong growth. Though Andromeda was earlier present in the insurance, vertical its presence got bigger during FY 08. It signed up with big players like HDFC Standard Life, Tata AIG, ICICI Prudential, UTI Mutual Fund, and so on. Not surprisingly, while most others primarily depend on the telecom services industry for majority of revenue, BFSI became an equally strong business for Andromeda, with 47% coming from telecom, while 29% came from banking.

In the telecom space, the company continued to consolidate its footing in the outbound services for the existing players. Amongst all the service lines that the company is into customer service, collections and back end - telemarketing contributed maximum at 55%.

As the business expanded, Andromeda grew by setting up four new offices, two in Mumbai and one each in Chennai and Bangalore. The seats increased by over 1,500.

EFFORT BPO : Effort Pays Off

A new entrant, the company trebles its revenue thanks to an exclusive focus on the domestic market

Rajneesh Sarna, Director

Direct positioning and clear focus has won many clients and partners for Effort BPO. The major verticals targeted by Effort are financial services, telecom and insurance sectors.

The company registered a strong growth of 78% in FY 07 in its domestic operations. The revenue for the same year was around Rs 12 crore, which is expected to more than treble to reach Rs 50 crore in the current year.

A lot of these jumps can be attributed to recent expansion of the client base. The year 2007 was an active year for Effort, that saw it acquiring clients in all segments.

A leading domestic mutual fund company outsourced their outbound telesales operations to Effort and a prominent insurance company gave them their contact center work in a long-term deal. There was also some movement in the telecom vertical as the company grabbed two major deals from leading telecom players in the last year.

Effort has also been expanding its service lines horizontally and has established multiple points of contact (both voice and non-voice). They now provide services like tele-surveys, abandon rate monitoring, and average handle time follow-ups.

Currently operating from four locations in India, Effort plans to spread its operations and up-scale in the existing facilities. It expects a 6,000 plus employee base in the domestic business by the end of this year, and is also eyeing the domestic ITeS in a big way.

FIRSTSOURCE : Record Growth

Hiring 3,000 employees in spite of the industry downturn, reflects the confidence of the company

Ananda Mukerji, MD and CEO

Firstsource registered a staggering domestic growth of around 330% in FY 08, with revenues jumping fromRs 31.7 crore in FY 07 toRs 134.45 crore in FY 08. Major revenue (80%) came from BFSI, healthcare, telecom and media segments.

Firstsource ventured deeper into the media segment adding DSL, DTH and cable productsinstallation and technical support, network team scheduling, and ticket management.

The story continued in delivery presence too. Firstsource has 20 facilities in India, encompassing cities like Hubli, Vijaywada, Indore, Kochi and Puducherry.

Top clients at Firstsource contributed around 51% of the total revenue in 2006-07, which dipped to around 37% in the current financial year adding diversity to client portfolio. Firstsource hired around 3,000 employees in spite of the industry downturn in the year 2007-08. Its total employee strength (domestic) is now at around 18,500. There is a general expectation of further recruitment, showing a positive trend.

Firstsource started domestic operations only in the year 2007, its client portfolio boasts of major names across verticals. Airtel and Vodafone in the telecom sector continue to be the growth drivers for the company. BFSI boasts of Lloyds TSB, and healthcare has Aspen Valley hospitals and Life Point hospitals in the list.

Though recession affected operations, but not diminished the growth to a great extent.

HTMT GLOBAL SOLUTIONS : Healthy Growth

By adding new verticals and service lines, it remained a top domestic BPO

Viswanath Rao, Executive VP, Operations

HTMT clocked revenues of Rs105 crore from its domestic operations in FY 08. That is a growth of around 62% over the previous years revenues, which stood at Rs 65 crore. The growth is projected to dip to 38% in FY 09 due to the ongoing downward industry spiral.

The domestic operations of HTMT also yielded a healthy average realization figure of around Rs150 per seat per hour (subject to process).

While telecom remained the highest contributing vertical this year as well, its contribution to the overall revenue dipped to 83.6% this year from 92% the previous year. Insurance, a new vertical for HTMT, contributed around 8% to domestic operations in FY 08.

Major service lines also remained the same with claims processing, customer services and billing continuing to be the strong areas. The top five clients contributed around 93% of the total revenue, with the top-most client alone accounting for 82.4%.

HTMT has six facilities in India, which accommodate almost 9,300 employees, a sizable chunk of its total 1,300 plus employees worldwide. While telecom engages a substantial number of the total manpower, the percentage of employees in the BFSI vertical showed a nominal increase this year.

It provides services in fifteen Indian languages for forty across verticals. Domestic processes are becoming more end-to-end as opposed to being purely voice-based.

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