Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 6)

Sandip Sen: I think rural BPO is an interesting concept. It will take a little time. The problem with the fourth tier cities is that this business will need the infrastructure. So, some of these cities need to have the infrastructure to be able to support a BPO, but there is a trend and we ourselves are seeing that. We are part of the trend to move into tier two and maybe tier three cities. The main reason is this: Let’s take telecom as an example. As the telecom market grows and grows and grows, the kind of customers you are getting are largely rural customers. They are the customers who you will need to speak to in the local lingo, the local accent. So, it’s not only Hindi that will work for them, but it’s the Bhojpuri which will work for them, or it is the language of that area which will work for them. They will be much more comfortable with somebody from that area and that region. So, you might see us getting into Vijayawada, for example. I am giving the other center in Hyderabad. We are moving into one of the centers in another center near there, which we might call it tier three, so there is a movement. I think the only problem is that all these sectors, all these cities, don’t always have the infrastructure. My opinion is that you will see a movement toward tier three. Tier four, at this point, may be a little farfetched, but we will see a gradual movement toward tier three as the rural market begins to grow. There is more fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

Sramana Mitra: And there are enough tier three cities that do have infrastructure, right?

Sandip: Right. You are seeing movement into, say, Durgapur, Vijayawada, Dehrarun – cities like that. You will see that happening.

Sramana Would you consider acquisitions in those areas?

Sandip: We have grown the domestic business very organically. We were the first mover. We have the advantage. I don’t think we are looking at any acquisitions in the domestic business, but that is the business that we have grown completely organically, and we are still growing as we speak.

Sramana: Okay, so I think I have hit most of the regional tends. Is there anything, any other major trend that you see in your business that we haven’t discussed?

Sandip: No, I think this is really what it is. The only other trend is that we in Aegis, we are specializing in customer life cycle management (CLM), which is still the biggest part of our business. But we have moved on to the entire customer experience, which means that we not only manage the customer experience as we do when we handle inbound calls, but we are now looking at enabling the customer experience in two ways. One is through technology. We acquired Awaya India, which we now call AGC or Avaya Global Connect. So, it gives us the ability to tell customers, not only can we handle your calls, but we can also do the architecture, switching, and routing of these calls, for you and for your other vendors. In terms of process, we are moving toward the entire shared services, which is the HRO and FNO. Our aim now is to tell customers that we would like to be part of their entire experience, which is managing, enabling, and extending their experience. We would like to handle their business not just from the customer end, but from the entire organization end to end, as IBM would like to do. You will find that the call center company that takes the lead, is the one that looks at this as an entire end-to-end process rather than just a customer process per se, and that is something we might see as we go forward.

Sramana: And your 150 customers are all Fortune 500 customers, right? Or Global 2000?

Sandip: I think out of our 150 customers, about 45 are Fortune 500 customers, the Global Fortune 500. We have smaller customer also. We have middle customers. There are also large billion-dollar [companies], but not necessarily Fortune 500.

Sramana : Okay. Very good. Thanks for sharing your stories. This was certainly illuminating for our readership.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis
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