Thursday, March 28, 2013

Pravin Kumar

In an Interaction with B&E’s Akhilesh Shukla, Pravin Kumar, CEO, Spanco BPO speaks on The Company’s entry into The African Subcontinent, tie-up with Bharti Airtel, Expansion plans and The Challenges in Employee retention that lie ahead

B&E: While the entire BPO industry runs on the off-shore business model, Spanco is interested in onshore businesses. What’s the reason behind this?
Pravin Kumar (PK): You’re right. At Spanco, we believe in focusing on the onshore business model – as much as 60% of Spanco’s revenue comes from onshore businesses while the rest is from offshore. The benefit of being in the onshore business model is that it minimises the risk of losing business. Besides, at Spanco, we believe in domain knowledge – that is why we just go for select clients and sectors. Most of our clients are from the BFSI, telecom and banking sectors.

B&E: What are the major investments that you are making in your Africa business, especially after getting shortlisted by Bharti Airtel for customer care and back-end support services?
PK: As soon as we entered into the African market, we got the contract from Bharti Airtel. As a result, we became the largest BPO in Africa on day one itself, with a work force of 2,200 people. We have improved the service level with the existing manpower and infrastructure. Earlier, these customer care centres managed to answer only 30% of the calls; it has now improved to 90%. As a result, the number of calls received per day dipped to 12,000 per day from 15,000 per day (as a result of increased customer satisfaction). We have committed an investment of $20 million for the next three years and are planning to hire 1,500 people by the end of March 2011. In the next two years, we will take the manpower level to 8,000. Further, to leverage our India experience, we plan to train some of the workforce in Africa at our facility in India. We have plans to take 100-125 work forces in batches to India for training. This will start from the next financial year.

B&E: What is the kind of growth opportunity you see for BPO businesses in Africa? How is the market different from that of India?
PK: The BPO sector would be one of the biggest employers in the African subcontinent. In the next five years, this sector will employ half a million people in the region in both domestic and international market. The best part of the continent is that they have people who naturally speak English and French. In some parts of the Africa, they speak Arabic also. Their accent is very close to the European countries. The time difference is less in comparison with India. Besides, as the unemployment rate is high, the workforce is cheaper. The average monthly salary ranges from $200-300. We see a huge growth opportunity for ourselves. The market will become at par with our India operation in a span of approximately three years.

B&E: Apart from the customer and back-end support of telecom operators, what are the other businesses you are planning to tap in the sub-continent?
We already have a tie up with Bharti Airtel for $226 million for running its customer care and back-end support for the next five years. The telecom market in Africa will certainly evolve. After Bharti Airtel’s entry, we have witnessed Spanco’s revenues go up. Besides that, we have also got an opportunity to run 66 Airtel showrooms in Africa. We will soon sign the agreement. That business will also flourish with the growth of telecom market in the region. Spanco would foray into power distribution and power reforms too. The power availability in some parts of Africa is as low as 15%, the maximum is 40%. We can add value to these two areas and the sector has a huge opportunity. And yes, e-governance has a high potential for growth too in the continent.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

She’s Not Yet a Woman To Me

Is Your Child Growing up Too Fast? Check in Time So That ‘Too Much, Too Young’ Doesn’t Leave you with 'Too Little, Too Late'...

Lolita was a literary marvel or a sleaze roll, depending on how you look at it. In any case, whether inside Nabokov’s classic, or outside of it, sexually precocious children are a discomfiting idea to most of us, except maybe wannabe reality-show makers who would stop at nothing.

Sexual precocity is just one of the fallouts to be imagined in tandem with the surging global trend of children attaining early puberty. As if the unbridled consumerism of our times wasn’t already blurring the lines between childhood, adolescence and adulthood, there comes the distressing and confusing, er, period of puberty for children. While 9 to 13 years is considered the normal bracket for pubertal development – a sequence of physical changes – to start, imagine getting pregnant at 10! A girl in Jerez, Spain, all of 10 years, accomplished just that and gave birth to a baby girl last month, at an age when most others like her are only expecting siblings.

It is tempting to get into the moral and legal propriety of consensual sex between minors – the father is a boy of 13 – but choosing to restrict the discussion to its biological complications, we wonder what it is to be burdened with maternity at such a tender age. Dr. Nikita Trehan, Gynaecologist and Laparoscopic Surgeon, says, “It is a very bad idea, since bone development isn’t complete in young mothers. In addition, the mother and fetus will be competing for nutrients during pregnancy. The risk of stillbirths and other health-related problems with the baby increase too.”


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Thursday, March 07, 2013

GOLF IN INDIA: MULTIPLIER EFFECTS

They say Multi-Billion dollar deals are supposed to get signed when you play golf with the plutocrats. Strangely, the Nabob Parvenu class in India hasn’t quite resonated with such fables despite golf’s presence for quite sometime in India. Thus, just to put paid to current perceptions of the pseudo-club, B&E does a quasi-subjective survey of the sport (and is surprised)

One key example that met our eyes was Digraj Singh, who runs Digraj Golf Inc., a corporate golf business, which has got even the likes of Thomas Cook interested in associating monetarily with the sport in a big way. Digraj started a landmark league that stretched golf: usually a golfing event for men is for 4 days, and for women, 3 days. Digraj Golf Inc. started a league this year that is played in Delhi for over 2 months. And ‘stretching golf’ is not only in terms of the time golf is being played. The plan is to extend the tournament to all those golfers (and by PGTI data, there are 100,000 golfers in India today) who want to play but are either not professionals or do not have the money to pay for regular golf event. Indiver Rastogi, Head, Enterprise Business Unit, Thomas Cook India Ltd, says he and Rakshit Desai, Executive Director, Travel Services, had been thinking of doing something with golf for some time. “So when Digraj came up with the idea of a league with such a broad base, we did not take much time at all to get associated,” he said. They saw golf as an area of change. The Indian Golf League, of which they are the title sponsors, allows their customers to play golf for two months. This was unimaginable before Digraj came up with the league concept.

No wonder, the best brands are teeing off to catch the golf train. Rolex, Mercedez Benz, Seagram, LG, Audi, Aircel, Tata Steel, Indian PSUs SAIL, ONGC... you name ‘em and they are there. The reason, explains Parmar, is that foreign companies realise that India has two major assets lacking in other countries: sprawling landscapes that can house golf courses and a booming economy with a massive disposable income in the hands of the middle and upper middle classes for the country to become the regeneration crib for golf.

From a comparatively insignificant 80 contestants for the Indian Junior Tour some five years ago, there are now 200. But more than any other index, the amateur golf story in India is marked by the stepping in of the US-based sports marketing behemoth, IMG, which now has a joint venture with Reliance Industries (Nita Ambani being the presiding deity for Reliance’s sports investment) to give scholarship to four young golfing talents, who’d be given comprehensive education plus golf training in the Florida-based Leadbetter (named after the golfing legend) institute. The IMG Reliance JV’s Indian golf programme will invest a million dollars on each selected talent, who would go to Florida for an 11-hour per day gruelling course of formal education plus golf training from this year on.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Throws light on Czech’s post-USSR relations with Russia

In an exclusive conversation with Akram Hoque and sayan ghosh, H.E. Miloslav Stasek, the Czech Republican Ambassador to India, shares his views on EU, NATO and US and throws light on Czech’s post-USSR relations with Russia.

B&E: How are your relations with post-USSR Russia?
MS: We accept each other. We understand Russia is a superpower. It is a very important source of energy because most of the oil and gas coming to Czech Republic is sourced from Russia. In this perspective, Russia is our strategic partner. However, Russia must accept that we are an independent country now. The political dynamics of central Europe have completely changed. We are a member of Western Europe now. The issue of establishing American defence systems is being addressed and we are having regular discussion with Russia on this front. With the new American administration in place, Barack Obama is now thinking of a new system which could handle this issue.

B&E: There are strong rumours that Czech Republic wants the loans ($10 million) back that it gave to Communist countries like North Korea under your Communist regime. Your comments?
MS: We want all our money back (laughs)! After the collapse of the communist regime, we would like to settle all our debts unofficially with all the countries. The money loaned out was invested in some projects that were initiated through the government. We are now talking to international institutions like IMF to find a solution for this issue. North Korea is not the only country where our money is. There are countries like Sudan ($11 million) and Bolivia where these issues need to be settled.

B&E: There has been negligible criticism over hate-crimes against minority groups like Gypsies. Is the Government bothered about this?
MS: The government is bothered and we have assigned one of our ministries the charge of this entire issue. The ministry is focussing on how livelihood of Gypsies can be improved. They have all the rights like any other citizens. The problem is the integration of Gypsies in the national society because they live in cross communities. They don’t send their children to school even for basic education. So the challenge is to change their mentality. That is also a problem with US and Canada.

B&E: As an Ambassador, what are your plans for fortifying relations between India and Czech Republic?
MS: I will do all I can to enhance the extended relations we have with India. I will try to enhance people-to-people, economic, cultural, security and military cooperation. There is a huge potential and we would like to benefit from the economic development of India.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Monday, March 04, 2013

FORD INDIA: VANTAGE POINT

From a company that was normally counted as an interesting niche player in India, Ford has suddenly become the flavour of the season with the Figo. Our editorial team member walks through Ford one fine lazy afternoon and gives ‘the scoop’ by Sanchit Verma

He proved to be right on the money, as the Figo has changed the entire status quo for the company in just about three months. Thanks to Figo, Ford now stands about neck-to-neck with GM (19,964 units) in the compact car segment with sales of 18,495 units in the April-June period (compared to just 221 units last year). The first ever compact car by Ford India sold more than 17,000 Figos and over 24,000 purchase orders in place already and that's within its first 16 weeks in the market. In fact, advance bookings are touching the 6,000 figure, which creates a different set of problems for the company. Figo's fuel efficiency and highly competitive price have given Ford the momentum it needs to potentially disrupt the market dynamics in the automotive sector. Great start. But as the Honda tagline goes (changed to my choice): Why so late? It must be my imagination, but I can almost feel a bubbly new-found energy on this visit to the Ford plant. A senior worker tells me that the plant is based on the One Ford strategy initiated by Mulally, which is aimed at better use of common Ford design platforms globally and greater integration of production & purchase teams. I nod away; I’ve read it somewhere already.

"The engine plant was created with a 'best of the best' approach," says Michael Boneham, President & MD, Ford India, when he meets me. He seems a picture of exuberance and optimism – competitors tell me that that’s been the case since the success of the Figo (but again, read his interview to me in the latter section of this story). As I walk through the stamping, body and paint shop, I get a better view of the all new revamping being done to transform a manual assembly hub into a globally standardised and technologically advanced manufacturing hub, which will have over 4,000 employees working in-and-out. Along with them, a team of 92 robots (imported from Korea) also work round the clock to achieve production efficiency and quality paint jobs with high degrees of accuracy and quality, applying the new three-step wet solid paint and giving the glossy finish. The plant is poised for big volumes as it has doubled its capacity since renovation. As I move on, I come across the flexible assembly line, which assembles both of the 1.4 litre diesel and 1.2 litre petrol engines. I reach the TCF part where the interiors, chassis, engines and wheels are fitted, before it passes onto quality testing. Here it passes environment tests as per emissions norms – I look and marvel at the car as it is rolled out, giving out an impression of being an advanced engineering graduate; I’m not, but what the heck.

I’m told Ford has finally gone the way of localisation to reduce total cost of ownership. Add to this the investment, led by Ford Motor Company, in Figo – and the combination is apparently winning. It has led Ford India to take a new route and has given it capital leverage to rapidly build up a dealership network. Ford has a current network of 166 dealers, which it plans to expand to 200 by the end of this year. On a competitive basis, Indian consumers are known to be very particular about ease of serviceability – at least my dad is – and this gives brands like Hyundai and Maruti an exceptional advantage. If Ford manages the same, it would potentially be a good push for their up-market portfolio too.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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