Surprise

Are Indian BPOs creating jobs in Buffalo?

Posted in: Career Wednesday 03rd, February 2010

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deepali chatruvedi

Employee

In May last year, when President Barack Obama urged Americans to "Say no to Bangalore (read no to offsourcing to India) and yes to Buffalo", little did he realise that a Mumbai-based business process outsourcing (BPO) company was creating jobs even in Buffalo.

Firstsource was perhaps the first BPO that set shop in the US city of Buffalo in 2004 with 287 employees. The number has risen to 600. And Firstsource has close to 4,000 employees in the whole of the US.

Aditya Birla Mincas (ABM), the BPO arm of the Aditya Birla Nuvo group, also plans to ramp up its global hiring numbers. The company, with a headcount of 13,000, has considerable presence in both Canada (due to the acquisition of Mincas) and the US. Over the next six months, the company plans to hire 3,500 globally.

"Our strategy is driven by the belief that there will always be several processes that clients would prefer to be delivered from onshore due to cultural or compliance reasons. Besides, we always want to play in the outsourcing market than the offshoring space,"

"When we started our operations in the UK, we had one centre. Today, the headcount in the UK is 1,600, with presence in three centres. The success of this onshore strategy is evident in some of the customer wins that we are getting. Rather, during the slowdown, this has helped us get business and kept us in deals that otherwise would not have been possible to win,"

On his part, ABM Chief Executive Officer Deepak Patel believes the reason to have onshore presence "is because a lot of work that is being done here just cannot be offshored. Besides, the value that we are able to give in some of the processes in onshore is just not achievable offshore. Having said that, work that can be done cost-effectively in a region (irrespective of the geography) will end up in those regions".

The market for offshore services, according to research company Everest, is $220-280 billion (Rs 10-13 lakh crore), whereas that for onshore services is $480-520 billion (Rs 22-24 lakh crore).

"In many cases, the onshore presence has come to the company through an acquisition and, hence, some of these contracts will have a lock-in clause. Whenever they get an opportunity, these firms will move it offshore or near-shore. In many cases, firms would maintain the contract and continue to work to get additional business," explains Vinu Kartha, partner at the offshore advisory firm, Tholons.