Wipro BPO eyes smaller towns for growth

Wipro BPO is looking at embarking on the third phase of expansion of business process outsourcing operations, and was eyeing smaller towns like Nasik, Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar, Kochin, Vishakhapattanam and Jaipur.

In the first phase, it had tapped cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, followed by Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune.

With these centres close to saturation, Wipro was looking at new cities. "Wipro recruits a lot from satellite towns and Kolkata operations for example currently has 25 per cent of its manwpower from smaller towns", said V Anandkumar, vice-president, people supply chain & employee branding, Wipro BPO.

Wipro recently held a 'job fest' at Guwahati University and picked 45 from a pool of 800.

Centres like Delhi and Pune had over 3000 people, while Kolkata had 2900, and Mumbai nearly 5000 employees. Once a centre had more than 3000 employees, it was logical to look at stabilization. Wipro had employee strength of around 20,000, and at the current rate of recruitment, would be having 25,000 on its rolls in a couple of years.

The ratio of 'met to offer' to 'fit' candidates had declined from 15-16 per cent earlier in cities like Delhi or Mumbai, to 8-10 per cent currently in the big cities.

In smaller towns, the ratio was lower. Anandkumar said Wipro preferred to have people on board who would stay on for longer periods and one way to do this was to ensure they started off with realistic expectations from the industry. Attrition rates fell 40 per cent since last year thanks to this. At the same time, Wipro developed incentive schemes, with around 200 employees going to offshore operations, and around 400 shifting from BPO to IT. The company today provided personal growth opportunities to deserving employees including on-going education while on the job, added Anandkumar. Candidates below internal criteria in some way or the other received training in skill-deficit areas and were absorbed if they cleared tests.

Kolkata was a leading training centers, added Jasmine Malhotra, assistant vice-president for talent creation.

Kolkata as a centre grew at 100 per cent over last year.

Wipro would add 500 recruits in the coming six months.

One of the major advantages of Kolkata was that it attracted talent from satellite towns like Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Bhubaneshwar, and eastern Indian cities, Anandkumar explained.

Anandkumar admitted that one challenge facing the BPO industry was industry perception.

Globally, the percentage of women employees in BPO operations was around 70 per cent, but in India, this figure was 30 per cent.

Many shunned BPOs despite its contribution to the economy through revenues and high profit margins.