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IBM DAKSH : Domestically Daksh Too

The merger with the sales team of IBM seems to have helped domestic operations well

Pavan Vaish, CEO

Last year was an action packed one for the domestic operations of IBM Daksh. The merger of the sales team of IBM with IBM Daksh, seems to have helped its domestic operations, despite the floating rumors that IBM was planning to sell off the company. Together with integrating its tools and operations with its parent company, IBM also managed to grab some big deals (like Max New York life India) in the domestic market.

Another major domestic deal which came its way recently was the six-year outsourcing agreement with Bharti-Airtel for its platinum customers.

IBM Daksh pushed its domestic operations more vigorously during the last year and set up new centers in Kolkata, Pune, and Vizag. Although overall growth was slow, the employee strength has been high.

Domestic operations continued to contribute a significant chunk to the total revenue. Strengthening the domestic focus was a huge $15 mn deal with travel portal Makemytrip.com, which included people and asset transfer.

As expected, the service lines offered by Daksh in the domestic market continued to evolve, with customer relationship management and back office services being the driving areas. IBM Daksh significantly diversified its capability mapping activities and focused on industry specific offerings for its domestic clients. On the vertical front, the major revenues in the domestic market came in from the telecom, BFSI and IT segments.

InfoVision : Looking Beyond BFSI

Tapping new verticals like consumer electronics and telecom has helped it with a balanced client concentration

Aditya Gupta, President

Even though InfoVision started as a domestic contact center, and has an offshore operation too, the company has always positioned itself more as a domestic player. Taking careful steps, InfoVision has completely grown organically in the domestic space, by testing waters in multiple industries. While telecom is big for most of the other players, InfoVision draws close to 75% of its revenue from BFSI. Though now it is looking at expanding in telecom too.

Consumer durables is big for the company and accounts for about 15% of its revenues. Travel and hospitality too are verticals where InfoVision has presence. InfoVisionsrevenue grew by over 50% during the FY 08. In the BFSI space, the company has grown and consolidated its existing business with some of the top players including Citibank, Standard Chartered, HDFC, ABN, Axis Bank, Barclays, etc. Besides this, in consumer electronics, LG Electronics is a big client.

On the client concentration front InfoVision has a pretty balanced approach, which seems to reflect that dependence on its top client is not very large. While the top client contributes about 17% to its revenues, the top 5 account for about 60%.

InfoVision also took steps to expand operations, by adding over 1,500 seats in Delhi, and at the same time adding about 300-400 seats in Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai offices each Gurgaon is next on InfoVisions expansion roadmap.

Intelenet Global : First-Mover Advantage

Among the first international BPOs to have made a strong foray into the domestic market, Intelenet is now reaping the benefits

Radhika Balasubramanian, Head, Domestic BPO

Currently functioning out of thirteen centers across seven locations in India, Intelenet continues to grow its domestic footprint. The company still maintains a healthy revenue mix of financial services/insurance and telecom, both accounting for around 90% of the overall revenue.

Intelenet currently has a capacity of 8,200 seats with expansion plans for 20,000 seats by 2009. The company is also offering multilingual services in over nine Indian languages to its clients.

Notwithstanding all these positive, the company received bad press owing to some employee misunderstanding with TLs.

Intelenet has been able to command a higher margin in the industry based on professional services. Little wonder that it keeps winning big accounts like the SBI deal. On the technology front as well the company has developed proprietary CRM and technology systems, which can be customized to the needs of individual clients. The company is also refurbishing its top management team. As part of the same effort the company announced the appointment of Gayatri Balaji as chief operating officer of its domestic BPO business for South India.

Intelenet is also working at process improvement and productivity in a serious manner. The company hopes to marginally increase the seat utilization rate by the end of this year. It is also looking at evaluating other means of cuttings costs.

Magus Customer Dialog : Switching to Polygamy

Realizing the negative of over-dependence on a single vertical, the company is looking at other areas

Shyam Sunder, Director

In many ways, Magus is the grand daddy of the domestic BPO Industry. The call center came into being in 1989 and from then onward it has charted a course for itself. The biggest focus of the company from the onset has been delivering high quality, customer retention services. Little wonder then that the company has many telecom players as its customerscompanies which are facing a lot of churn in the marketplace. Over 80% of Magus revenue comes from the telecom sector.

This overt dependence could also be a hassle since most of these companies are going in for high-profile outsourcing of complete infrastructure and customer management. Yet, till now, Magus has been able to hold fort. Management is trying to reduce the dependence on telecom by venturing into newer verticals like banking and entertainment.

The other issue that Magus faces is its increasing overheads, since the company has decided to operate out of major cities, instead of venturing into tier-3 or smaller towns. This might have led to increased pressure on margins due to increasing costs, like rentals and salary. The only way to mitigate the same would be to look at smaller towns and cities for expansion.

It remains to be seen, that in this day of consolidation, how long Magus will be able to hold fort as an independent entity, considering that it is a prize catch for any serious player wanting to make a big foray into the domestic market.

MPHASIS : Wooing Big Names

Increased focus vertically and on horizontal lines helped pull in big clients

Ramesh Gudalur, President

While domestic focus remained strong on financial services, telecom, healthcare and hi-tech industries, MphasiS expanded its back office operations and service lines horizontally. Its domestic strategy also revolved around acquiring major players in the banking and telecom segments.

MphasiS cultivated CRM operations and provided multi-layered interaction services incorporating chat and emails. Last year also saw a move toward non-voice services like HR, F&A, updating brokerage information and book keeping. Subsequently it has also gone to places like Ahmedabad, Noida, Puducherry and Indore to serve domestic clients.

MphasiS also kicked off its domestic business with Airtel; but it has not only leveraged on increased business from its premier client, it added a few biggies like Idea and SBI with immense potential to its portfolio too. The share of domestic operations in the total revenue is thus expected to rise significantly this year.

MphasiS has decided to cut down hiring by around 50% this year, Though economic recession is one big reason, it also has to do with the upscaling of utilization rates in the organization. The average utilization in August was around 76%, a great move from the 68% a few months back. The company expects this figure to rise to 79% by the end of this year.

Sources from the organization clearly state that the recession is only going to further strengthen MphasiS focus on the Indian market.

Optimus Global Services : Negotiating Success

An impressive 92% growth was the result of a strong portfolio and the companys power of negotiation

Chiranjiv Chatterjee, COO

Experience counts. And in the case of Optimus, a wholly owned subsidiary of Polaris Software, it is the power of negotiation that came along with the experience that saw the company double its revenues in FY 08.

Optimus strengthened its portfolio and continued to provide a complete spectrum of back office services in the banking and financial services sector.

Optimus consolidated its customer base too. Primarily into the BFSI and telecom space, the top five clients contributing 90% of its revenues. While BFSIs contribution rose from 70% in FY 07 to 93% the next fiscal, telecom has gone down from about 10 to 6%. The company very aggressively explored the insurance vertical too. Strategically, the company looked at getting bigger deals in this space, that being the next logical step. Telemarketing and collections remained the dominant service lines for Optimus, Optimus looked at getting into inbound customer service too.

On the peoples front too, the company almost doubled its headcount by adding close to 1,600 people, taking the total manpower count to 3,000 plus. As the team got bigger, Optimus went in for more managerial level people. Optimus had a new head of operations last year, while a new COO also took charge.

RT Outsourcing Services : Service with a Smile

Helped along by its exclusive arrangements with large companies, RT plans to focus on RIM too

Sanjeev Kakkar, CEO

It was yet another year marked by big client winsToshiba, Zenith, Western Digital, HTC, among others. The company recorded a growth of close to 70% during FY 08, while it continued to have an exclusive arrangement with other biggies like HP, IBM, Lenovo, Acer, etc.

RT Outsourcing also provides integrated service support (reverse logistics) for all kinds of electronics including computers, mobile phones and other consumer electronics like set-top boxes and display devices, amongst others. The company primarily does customer service (tech and non-tech), telemarketing, email, web chat, varied back office processing, remote PC support, and web-based e-CRM services. Technical support services remained the largest contributor with close to 97% of the revenues.

Other verticals the company has presence in are telecom, BFSI, travel, ISP, FMCG, and healthcare.

The year also saw the company adding close to 450 employees in its Okhla center.

In an interesting development, RT also opened a whole new division focused on remote infrastructure management, both onsite and enterprise. A new person was taken on board to head this division, reflecting its planned focus on RIM.

Another big deal for RT was its tie-up with SatNav Technologies, a player in the Navigation and GPS Technology. As the service partner for SatNav, RT Outsourcing will serve all its customers who own companys GPS Devices. Another Taiwan-based company Genius appointed RT Outsourcing as its service partner for India.

Sitel India : Gearing Up!

Strategic growth plans in India will see the company bring in 4,000 more people in the next two years

Safir Adeni, CEO

The year saw Sitel announce the launch of its operations in the Gurgaon center. The company is expected to continue its presence here by bringing an additional 4,000 people in the next two years. Prior to this, Sitel India, had opened a contact center in Hyderabad too, and there are two other in Mumbai.

The verticals that Sitel serves include technology, ISPs, telco, BFSI, and travel and retail. The company started way back in the year 2000, but the first few years lacked direction. It is only after the present CEO, Safir Adeni took over that the firm got some stability. On the domestic front, Sitel has been doing pretty well with Indias share having increased from. 0.6% to close to 5%. Clearly the focus has been to offset the impact of the declining US dollar.

Sitel in India has a list of impressive clients which includes major financial services institutions, leading BFSI organization hardware manufacturers, and leading online service providers. The company provides domestic receirables management/collections programes for large corporations.

Spanco Spice : Integrated Giant

The merger of three companes has helped in the emergence of one of the largest domestic BPO

Kapil Puri, Chairman

During FY 08, Spice Televentures and Spanco Telesystems and Solutions merged three existing domestic BPO businessesOmnia BPO Services, Spanco BPO Services, and Bharat BPO. After selling Sparsh (Spancos domestic call center arm) to Intelenet Global, it has been operating in a JV with Spice groups Omnia BPO Services.

Strategically, the new entity has moved its focus to debt collection across the BFSI space. It added six clients with Citi Group being the largest. Traditionally, voice-based and contact center services to telecom and governance clients have been Spancos forte.

In the governance space, the company won some big projects including a contract from the Orissa Government to roll out a State Wide Area Network across the state. Spanco, along with ITI will build own and operate a SWAN connecting 30 districts and 284 talukas in the state of Orissa. Spanco also bagged another Haryana State Electronics Development Corporations system integration project to connect jails and courts in Haryana through videoconferencing.

The company now has two set ups in Gurgoan and Vashi. Both the facilities a over 3,200 seats in all. In the next phase of expansion, from 7,000 seats across 10 cities, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Kolkata, the company plans to ramp up capacity to 15,000 seats by March 2010 with a focus on tier-2 and -3 cities, Targeting revenues up to the tune of Rs 450 crore.

vCustomer : Proposing Value

Strategies for the domestic market worked very well, as clients realized the value proposition

Sanjay Kumar, CEO

Though a large chunk of vCustomers revenues still came from its international clients, during FY 08 the company geared itself for the domestic market in a big way. It not only started selling its homegrown CRM solution commercially, it also led with the software in the Indian market. The move showed instant results, with vCustomer adding twenty-eight new customers across verticals including e-retail, food & beverages, governance, telecom, ISPs.

During FY 08 the company saw overwhelming response from the domestic players who now, the company believes, have started appreciating their "value proposition". The company sees better opportunity in India not just in terms of growth potential but scope to do higher value add.

Some big accounts were added in the food & beverages vertical while in the governance space the Ministry of Health kept it occupied.

On the e-retail front, e-Bay India was a big deal. It also launched a multi-channel support service for its online retail customers. However, insurance and banking, remained the biggest verticals.

About 15% of its revenues came from domestic deals vCustomer opened an office in Mumbai, with an additional 500 seats. The new center is expected to cater to both international and domestic clients. This is the companys fifth facility in India. The company also made some management level changes by getting people from outside locations.

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