The Hindu Business Line : Research services cos go for multi-lingual capabilities

Spreading wings
While some firms are wooing foreign nationals to work from India, others are setting up dedicated centres overseas.
Deal sizes are in the range of $0.5 million - $2 million and with multi-lingual capabilities, it could rise by 40%

Adith Charlie

Mumbai, Nov 23 Indian market research outsourcing (MRO) firms are building multi-lingual capabilities in their workforce in a bid to garner larger deals and serve clients in non-English speaking geographies. While some firms are busy coaxing foreign nationals with specialisation in European languages to work from India, others are busy setting up shop overseas.

MRO firms remotely provide research and analytics services to help global enterprises study various markets. Worldwide, it is typically the FMCG and medicine sector that use this industry extensively.

Companies prefer to partner with players who can do market research in major European and Asian languages, as they do not have to slice a particular deal between players in different geographies.

Traditionally, Indian MRO players have worked with translators and interpreters to carry out research work in languages such as French, German, Italian, and Spanish for clients. “Such an arrangement is not scalable, thereby limiting the ability to service larger clients in different geographies,” according to Mr Manoj Madhusudanan, Assistant Vice-President, Evalueserve, which is a Gurgaon-based KPO.

According to Mr Ashwin Mittal, Director, Cross-Tab Marketing Services, Indian MRO players have not been able to secure large deals due to the inability to take up multi-lingual research.

Industry observers point out that deal sizes in the MRO space are in the range of $0.5 million - $2 million. With multi-lingual capabilities, the deal size could swell up by 40 per cent, an analyst said.

Evaluserve, which has been one of the early movers in this space, has a 90-member strong team in Gurgaon with expertise in different languages. Of this, about 60 persons are non-Indian residents. “We started of with just 4 people in 2004. Now this team has given us the skill set to service clients in 55 languages,” said Mr Madhusudanan. City based Cross-Tab is keen to hire overseas nationals with linguistic skills and bring them to its centres in India, added Mr Mittal.

Another model is to set up dedicated centres overseas. In August, the Mumbai-based Ugam Solutions had set up a multilingual project management and data collection centre in London, UK, to provide business-to-business multi-country research. “We will be hiring 50-60 employees of different linguistic origins. We want to create a team that has capabilities in 15-20 languages worldwide,” the company’s CEO, Mr Sunil Mirani, had said earlier.

Evalueserve, too, is embarking on a similar model and intends to set up a 30-people strong base in continental Europe. In addition to servicing continental Europe, it will also facilitate the company’s expansion across various time zones, added Mr Madhusudanan.

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