The Hindu Business Line : AKT BPO scaling up operations

AKT Business Process Outsourcing (AKT BPO) Private Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based AKT Services LLC, is in the process of scaling up operations.

Within a year of establishing its presence in India by setting up an office at Navi Mumbai, AKT BPO has opened a branch in Coimbatore. "This for us is a second pilot," says Mr Daniel Victor, Managing Director, AKT BPO.

Justifying the location of the branch in a tier II city, Mr Victor said the company believed in giving its staff quality life, away from the crowd and bustle.

According to him, getting people to do the job was not as serious an issue as in retaining them. "The biggest problem in this industry is in getting people who grow with the company. Most of them jump from one company to another for a small rise in the pay, ultimately jacking up the income levels."

Stating that the company is looking for individuals with sound ability, attitude and values, he said the team size had risen from a mere three a year ago to a 30-member team at present.

"We then did just 200 tax returns, but are targeting at doing 2,000 this year. As we grow and expand our targets we will rope in more people," he told Business Line.

While emphasising that the company would not rush to the window of opportunity to grow exponentially within a short span, he conceded that time would play a vital role.

"We do not truly believe that success is in size or in grabbing a percentage of the market share. For us, it is in excelling in work in terms of quality and delivery," he added.

The company is confident of scaling up its operations. According to Mr Victor there was a huge gap in the number of candidates registering for the CPA programme in the US in recent years.

"This has triggered the potential for outsourcing such services. We started with retirement/pension services but have within a year moved to do tax returns and compilation accounting," he said.

The US Department of Labour, while estimating a loss of 2-million service jobs loss to offshore outsourcing by 2010, has predicted the creation of 22 million net new services jobs.