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Raja Simhan T E

Thiruvallur (TN) , May 6

MS P. Sharmila, a 24-year-old entrepreneur, is running a business processing outsourcing (BPO) firm. Unlike most of the CEOs running their businesses from air-conditioned rooms, she runs her firm — Chida Soft — from a small room in her old house in Kizhanur village, about 70 km from Chennai, in Thiruvallur district.

The daughter of an agriculturist, Ms Sharmila, a graduate, is one of the business associates of Lason India, a subsidiary of the US-based Lason Inc. And, with a team of 15, she is creating documents for Lason clients in the US. The profile of Chida Soft employees is plus two and above, Ms Sharmila said.

A bullock cart track off the Thiruvallur-Chennai state highways takes one through paddy fields to the Kizhanur village, which has a population of about 1,500. Ms Sharmilae told presspersons that most of the young people in the village came from an agriculture background and did not get jobs. So, they need to travel to Thiruvallur or Chennai in search of jobs.

"We approached Lason to become business associates, and have been doing work for it in the last three months," she said. Each employee gets around Rs 2,000 a month, which is a good amount for people in the village. A number of young people in and around the village are now approaching the company for employment, she added.

These employees work in three shifts handling legal publishing work, and do processes such as coding, keying and auditing, according to Mr Pradeep Nevatia, Managing Director, Lason India.

"We are experimenting with the help of Ms Sharmila to introduce Lason Village. The quality of work done by Ms Sharmila's team was 99.995 per cent," he told newspersons in the village.

With no Internet and mobile connection (excepting BSNL), Lason employees take the documents from Chennai to the village every day, he said.

"This is not a charity, but it has got a charitable connotation. We are leveraging technology to bridge the digital divide. With the launch of the Kizhanur facility, we have, in our own small way, taken BPO to the masses. The BPO industry is ideally made for India. Except information technology infrastructure, no other infrastructure, including beautiful roads, is required for the industry,'' he said.

According to Mr Nevatia, this is the first step that Lason has taken towards a new self-sustenance movement in rural India. This model will enable creation of employment and wealth in remote areas hitherto untouched by the IT-BPO companies.

Lason India is a transaction processing BPO and operates on a business associate model wherein it breaks up each of its products into small units of skilled and de-skilled components and outsources the latter to its business associates. Each associate is an independent entrepreneur owning computers and employing people. It works with 65 business associates located in Chennai, Pondicherry and Kanchipuram. There are about 5,000 business associates and on its own Lason has about 1,000 employees, Mr Nevatia said.

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Lason India takes BPO boom to villages

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