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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