Ahmedabad: On an Overdrive

Everyone thought that the devastating riots last year would leave an
indelible scar, but the twin cities of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar bounced right
back to stake their claim as premier BPO venues in the country. The rise of the
BPO brigade in Gujarat has been so spectacular that even the state secretary of
IT today dreams of making the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar belt the ITeS equivalent of
Bangalore in IT.

Dreams cannot, however, be built on thin air and this is proved by a host of
small to medium call centers/BPO players cropping up in Ahmedabad, along the
highway connecting Gandhinagar and also on the sprawling premises of the newly
built Infocity in Gandhinagar. The initial growth of BPO in this belt owes
largely to the successful operations of Motif India and Azure Technologies.

PLUSES English speaking manpower Good telecom infrastructure Proactive government MINUSES Close to the Indo-Pak border Prone to communal violence Lack of technically skilled manpower BPO COs IN AHMEDABAD Motif India  Azure Technologies  Global Response Corp i-Serve Systems iCall India Honey Harvest Shubham Infotech Palak Infotech Web Infotech Sigma Infotech Cybersoft Network  Source Results BDSoft Sancom Technologies Effective Teleservices Customer First Panamax Infotech Vipul Coating

Motif banked on a slew of strategic alliances for bagging new customers in
different domains. The partnership with Precision Response Corporation, the
second largest US inbound call center was utilized to grab a contract from the
world’s largest online auction site. It leveraged the relation with
Arizona-based Fusion Marketing to provide in-bound customer services for TV
commercials, while back-office insurance claims processing work started after
the alliance with the Columbia-based Strategic Resource Company.

Azure Technologies, which achieved a turnover of Rs 11 crore in 18 months,
relied primarily on both telecom and financial verticals. It supports the entire
help-line operations for BSNL’s CellOne services in Gujarat, besides catering
to global names like AT&T, Verizon, MCI Sprint on the telecom front and
Advantage, Vision, Freshnet and Galleria in finance.

While Motif’s facilities are based inside Ahmedabad, Azure has chosen the
GNFC InfoTower on the highway. Other players like Panamax Infotech and Vipul
Coating have established operations in the city while iCall is going the
InfoTower way.

The government’s hardselling has seen a plethora of BPO ventures come up in
the recently developed Gandhinagar Infocity. These would range from MNCs like
Global Response Corporation, one of the Top 30 US call centers, i-Serve Systems,
founded by Gujarati NRIs in UK, to indigenous players like Shubham Infotech and
Palak Infotech. Other players with BPO operations in Infocity include Honey
Harvest, Web Infotech, Sigma Infotech, Cybersoft Network, Source Results, BDSoft,
Sancom Technologies, Effective Teleservices and Customer First.

The Gujarat Government’s aggressive campaign to make Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar
the hub for ITeS seems to be driven by a well-planned strategy. There is the
realization that skill sets of a large section of the available manpower are
well below the requisite level for software services but fit the bill for the
BPO industry. The reasons for the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar emphasis: most of the
suave English-speaking populace hail from here.

Plus the riots of last year never affected this part of the state. The other
USPs of this belt especially over Mumbai are lower real estate prices, lower
attrition besides lesser geographical distances than bigger cities. For this
purpose, the government has also developed an integrated residential township
around Infocity.

According to the profile of the BPO companies operating in this belt,
Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar is strong in website services and Web applications,
call/contact centers and back-office operations. However, in other services such
as database management/development, data processing/management and network
management/remote maintenance, the city is relatively weak, though it has the
telecom infrastructure to support these services. This shows that the manpower
available in the city is best suited for call/contact centers and back-office
operations. Therefore, though the city has a large number of smaller players, it
is yet to attract a big name that could give it the relevant brand equity.