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. >>>

Latin America Startups: How Three Sourcing Entrepreneurs Crossed the Chasm

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: How big is your Argentina operation?

Sandip Sen: We have two centers in Buenos Aires. We have a center in Cordoba, a center in Tucumán, a center in Mar del Plata, and a center in Bahia Blanca, which means we have six centers and we have about 5,200 people in Argentina.

Sramana: Wow. So, that makes you one of the largest BPO operators in Argentina, yes?

Sandip: It does, it certainly does.

Sramana: What are the dynamics of the Argentinean market?

Sandip: Well, the dynamics of the Argentinean market are that on the positive side, it is a group market. It is a market which we think we can exploit and expand much further. The only downside of that market is that Argentina has, like a lot of Latin American countries, high inflation. We believe that that may be dumping a lot business from the U.S., for example, but overall we think it is a very good market. I think we are in a position, because of our global skills and because of some of these strengths that we get to grow that business much, much further. We believe this year we should be able to grow that business to about 35% from the time we bought it. >>>

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: How large, in terms of the size of the voice industry in the Philippines compared the size of the industry in India? What is the relative scale of that right now?

Sandip Sen: I think the Philippines, for the first time, has just overtaken India in the size of the voice industry alone. Of course in the nonvoice, India is still the largest by far. The Philippines today has close to 750,000 people on voice. India will be a little less. I don’t have the exact revenue data offhand. Remember that these businesses also have a lot of insulated business like transport and catering and all of that. That is really what is happening.

Sramana: What is your Philippines strategy? Are you growing in the Philippines, or are you trying to move out of the Philippines, since it is starting to get a little heated? >>>

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: Would you tell us more about the five verticals you work in?

Sandip Sen: Our biggest verticals are financial services, so these are banks. We work today for some of the largest banks, like JP Morgan Chase, American Express, Bank of America ,and Citibank. The other big verticals are telecom. We work for three of the top 10. We work for AT&T and Verizon, in the U.S. We work for Telstra in Australia. We work for Virgin Telecom, Virgin Media, and Virgin Telecom in the U.K., and we work for the major telecom players in India. India is the largest sales market by growth, and the players there are the Vodafones and the Airtels. >>>

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sandip Sen: So, after starting to stabilize the U.S. operations, we realized another thing, which was again different for a BPO provider. We realized that there was a large domestic provider in India, and because India is an emerging economy – it was growing at a fast rate – we also acquired a couple of companies in India that were very strong in domestic business. One of the companies acquired was a company I had started and set up called Customer First. We rapidly became India’s No. 1 domestic call center also. In fact, today we have close to 20,000 people in Indian domestic operations. >>>

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 1)

About Sandip Sen

Sandip Sen is president (Americas) and chief marketing officer of Aegis. He was the founder CEO and COO of Customer First Services, which was formed as a result of a management buyout in 2001. During his tenure at Customer First Services, it became one of India’s largest domestic call center companies with 1,400 seats across six locations, and employed more than 2,000 people. In January 2006, Customer First Services became a part of Aegis.

Prior to founding Customer First Services, Sen worked in senior management positions in the FMCG and telecom sectors. He was the head of marketing and later network head at Hutchison Paging. Mr Sen has an honors degree in economics from the Presidency College (Calcutta, India) and a master’s degree in business administration from the Xavier Labor Relations Institute (Jamshedpur, India). He also teaches MBA students Consumer Behavior at the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (Bangalore, India).

About Aegis

Aegis provides back office support, back office outsourcing, and global outsourcing. Several Fortune 500 clients have chosen Aegis to manage their customer interaction, back office, and other routine business processes. It serves clients in a variety of industries, including banking and financial services, travel and hospitality, auto and manufacturing, technology, and retail, among others.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Sandip, and welcome to the Outsourcing series. To set the context, would you give us some background on Aegis. When was the company founded? Where is it headquartered? Where was it founded? What is the genesis of the company? >>>

Outsourcing: Joe Lawler, Chairman, President And CEO Of ModusLink (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Got it. The question that I would like to drill down upon is the business you are discussing is the people-intensive business, right? Is that a correct statement, or is the business highly automated?

Joe Lawler: No, it is absolutely a correct statement because of the size runs that we typically do there. It typically makes more economic sense for our clients if we have people-intensive operating lines as opposed to a lot of expensive automation that changes fairly rapidly as products change. So, yes, you are correct. >>>