Start 'em young

Undergrads make up 25-30 per cent of the BPO industry. And BPOs want more. Why?

Manoj Sharma, consultant (ITES practice), MaFoi, puts it down to an acute gap between demand and supply of BPO personnel.

"BPO companies are lowering their academic barriers to hire undergraduates for all non-technical processes, and at least 10 per cent of all the people hired in the industry just have a school pass."

Sam Chopra, President, Call Centre Association of India (CCAI), agrees. "There has been atleast a 30 per cent rise in the number of undergraduates employed in the industry in the last one year," he says.

Deepak Dhawan, vice president (HR), EXL, has some more figures to report. "Last year," he says, "about one per cent of our total manpower was undergraduates, and this year, at least 4 per cent of our workforce is just 12th pass."

Pramod Bhasin, CEO, Genpact, which has hired about 200 undergraduates over the past six months, says that saving money on salaries has nothing to do with it. The savings in hiring undergraduates are negligible, he says.