Fostera to promote Thanjavur as rural BPO destination

Fostering Technologies in Rural Area (FOSTeRA), a rural BPO organisation promoted by Santhosh Babu, managing director of Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot) and former Krishnagiri collector, has set its sights on Thanjavur.

It opened a BPO centre at Periyar Maniammai University, Thanjavur, last Thursday and is planning to promote the district as the destination for rural BPO after Krishnagiri.

Speaking to Business Standard, Santhosh Babu said the new centre would have a 25-seat capacity and would take up data entry jobs followed by voice-based.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) and Adventity, an end-to-end knowledge and business process outsourcing company, will train the students.

“The idea is to make students earn while they learn. Each student will work for 3-4 hours every day after college and can earn up to Rs 3,000 per month,” he said.

Santhosh Babu, who recently took over as the managing director of Elcot, is also planning to promote the corporation as a consulting company, which would take up jobs from the IT/ITeS companies and allocate it to various colleges.

A few districts in the state have shown interest in replicating the Fostera model, he added. Chengai in Thiruvanamalai district is one among them.

Fostera is currently involved in police data management work for Krishnagiri district, besides handling ration and base survey work for the Karnataka government. It is also providing voice-related services.

Representatives from companies such as Wipro, Syntel, Hewlett-Packard, Cognizant, HOV Services and US Technology had recently visited Fostera as part of a Nasscom delegation.