BPO centre comes to a Karnataka village

Lason India and Jindal South West Foundation have jointly started a business process outsourcing (BPO) operation in Karnataka's Bellary district.

This is the second BPO operation Lason has started this year in an essentially rural area, the first being in a village called Kizhanur that is located near Chennai.

The new BPO, which was inaugurated on August 15, in the Jindal township in Bellary district is not a purely commercial operation.

Lason India's managing director and CEO Pradeep Nevatia said that the company was approached by the JSW Steel group to provide employment opportunities to relatives of people employed in JSW Steel's plant at Torangallu in Bellary district.

JSW Foundation, the entity that carries out social initiatives of the JSW Steel group, has provided the infrastructure that has gone in to creating a 20-seater BPO in Jindal township.

Nevatia said that Lason manages recruitment, training and operating costs of the BPO. The returns from the BPO operation are to be evenly split between JSW Foundation and Lason. Infrastructure costs for an expansion of the centre would be borne by JSW Foundation.

Lason India, a part of US' Lason Inc, provides BPO services in data and document management services.

Ranjit Pisharoty, senior vice president- technical, Lason India, said the Bellary district centre carries out data conversion work for electronic publishers. Typically, the lead time in this kind of work is about 48 hours to 72 hours ( in transactions processing it is as short as 8 hours to 24 hours).

The 20-people employed at the centre process about two million characters in an eight-hour shift. Lason has started the BPO with a relatively low risk operation "" longer lead times and conversion of legacy data.

Pisharoty said the turnaround time and quality standards met by the BPO were high. The turnaround time is 72 hours and quality standard achieved is 99.95 per cent.

Once the work is done at the Jindal township BPO, it is beamed through satellite connections to Lason's office in Chennai. Subsequently, the work is sent to the relevant customer abroad.

In the case of Lason's other rural BPO operation, in Kizhanur, the finished work is transferred to Lason's Chennai office through a medium like a floppy disk. This method is used because of inadequate connectivity.

The Kizhanur BPO, however, works three shifts a day with only women employees. Nevatia said that a village ambience made for a relatively safe working environment for women employees because everyone in the village knew each other.

Lason, which has a total strength of 5,000 people in India generating revenue of $ 25 million (about Rs 109 crore), has found rural BPOs a viable proposition. This is largely because attrition levels are negligible in village BPOs, and the company consequently incurs relatively low training costs.