MNCs eyeing India for captive operations

Undismayed by the outsourcing backlash in the US, large MNCs are going ahead
with their BPO plans to have a presence in the Indian region and sectors like–telecom,
BFSI and retail are leading the way.

"This happens to be an election year in US as well as in India, so we
need to handle this issue very sensitively. This outcry about outsourcing is
more than a political game then anything else. There are MNCs seriously looking
forward to having their captive operations. We are working closely with as many
as four such companies for this region," informed Avinash Vashistha, MD and
Co-founder of US-based neoIT.

neoIT has its Indian base at Bangalore and is an expert in offshore advisory
and manage-ment. The company is working closely with as many as three clients in
banking, telecom and claim processing respectively, to have their captive
operations in the region and one techno-logical design focused com-pany is
interested in having a captive in Philippines.

It may be recalled that last November, Dell, which has a captive call center
in Bangalore, redirected some of its help support calls from its captive, back
to the help desks in the US, which was a direct response to customer concerns.
Comp-laints about the quality of technical support caused the company to move
support for its Optiplex desktops and Latitude notebooks back to its US call
centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee.

"Yes, quality is one thing where India needs to work ahead but still,
Dell is an exceptional case and the Indian BPO industry is providing
sufficiently high-quality work. We are getting good response from US-based
companies eyeing Indian region for having captives. We believe that the best way
to get mileage out of outsourcing is to have a captive presence over here,"
he added.

Other BPO friendly destina-tions like Philippines are also picking up when it
comes to MNCs setting up their BPO operations. Competition in industry and
commerce all over the world is increasing, despite and perhaps even because of
the proliferation of mergers and acquisitions and the creation of global giants.

"The relentless and mount-ing pressure of competition in the market
place continues to drive a never-ending need for companies to reduce costs and
keep them to a minimum and destinations like India or Philippines are ideally
situated to catch the eyeballs in this segment," he stated.

The reason that Philippines was once a naval base for US is paying off well
for the region. "The region was quite strategic to US and it was a naval
base. And now, there are close to 40 call centers in that region and this number
is going to go up with time," he informed.

Zia Askari (CyberMedia News)