Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Kicking... But alive?

Good ol’ B.O is worried that Indian (and Chinese) BPOs are taking away American jobs! His worries might actually be true, irrespective of whether he can do anything about it

“We were a team of six in November 2008, which has subsequently been reduced to just one as of today,” says Gaurav Jain (who works as an executive with a US-based KPO in Delhi) as he recalls the pain he has gone through since the last year when global recessionary waves finally made their way into the Indian outsourcing industry. Though he was fortunate enough to retain his job, it hasn’t been an easy swim across for him, especially after his company got acquired by UK-based Copal Partners in March last year. Since then, he has consistently been facing the fear of retrenchment.

This is not the case with Gaurav alone. Madhu Smita, an executive working with a domestic BPO (a vendor to Microsoft) had to face the same truth. She was sent to US in March 2009 on ‘promotion’, but just four months of working there and she was handed over a pink slip (in August 2009) by her firm. “The company I worked for fired as many as 400 employees at that time. But as I had taken a house on lease for a year, it was financially difficult for me to move back to India at that moment. I stayed completely jobless for almost three months after that incident,” Madhu Smita tells B&E. The reasons are obvious. Global economy was in doldrums and there was uncertainty everywhere. Both vendors and clients were facing all kinds of problems – from squeezing profit margins to declining toplines – so much so that over the last 18 months the Indian BPO players had to cut off over 50,000 jobs. This not only disturbed the industry matrix, but also resulted in a negative spin off effect as every direct job in the BPO industry was backed by seven indirect jobs.

Obama’s worried Indian (and Chinese) BPOs are taking away US jobs? Are his worries with basis? Obama baiters might not like it, but the fact is that he might have weight in his statements. As per a latest Nasscom report, the $50-billion IT-BPO industry is headed for a 13-15% growth in FY2010-11. While business is reviving, hiring too seems to be back in full swing.


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

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