The Hindu Business Line : Farming out

Rural may give you visions of wavy grass far away from glass and chrome. But here too, you may stumble upon computers, networking equipment and people staring deep into their screens.

The idyllic countryside that has, for ages, been the inspiration for bards is now in readiness to catch the fancy of the tech professionals — the new-age guru of our times.

The time for Indian villages to taste the success of IT is finally here! It has been a small beginning, but slowly and surely, business process outsourcing (BPO) is spreading its roots deeper into the fertile rustic soil.

Speaking at Jyotismay, the first conference on rural BPO hosted recently by Byrraju Foundation in Hyderabad, Kiran Karnik, former president of Nasscom, said rural BPO companies are poised to proliferate in the country.

In these villages one is sure to come across wonder-struck people who, after overcoming their initial scepticism, are all set to make the most of the new opportunity.

Learning on the job

Shailendra Rao Nalige, General Manager, Comat Technologies (P) Ltd, says villages have been quick to catch on to these services. People have realised the benefits very quickly and keep asking for more services. They also refer people known to them.

He says it is a matter of pride for the villagers. They are proud to see their sons working on the computer. Comat has 800 rural business centres in Karnataka and 290 centres in Haryana. It has also won contracts to open centres in Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

The company first entered the rural space when it won the contract to execute the Government of Karnataka’s Nemmadi (Telecentre) project, which included setting up a network of 800 telecentres at the village hobli level through public-private partnership. The initial aim of this project is to provide copies of land records and 38 other citizen-centric services through the telecentres across rural Karnataka.

Comat also executed 70 per cent work of the Bhoomi project, where the Revenue Department computerised 20 million land records of some 6.7 million farmers in the State.

Central to the Bhoomi Project is the computerised system of issuing the Record of Rights Tenancy and Crop (RTC), which is needed by the farmers to get loans and settle disputes. From nine in the morning to five in the evening, Comat delivers government services such as issuing cash certificates, income certificates, RTCs. Earlier, the villagers would have to go to the nearest taluk office to get these services. But this was the springboard for offering private services.

Since the company had developed assets in the rural hinterland, it thought of offering other services, says Nalige. Each telecentre has two computers, one of which has to be used for government work during the day. At night, both machines can be used for BPO purposes. Multiple activities have reduced infrastructure costs, says Nalige. “We are at the hobli level and our next aim is to go to the gram panchayat level.”

Hughes Systique Corp has provided Comat with VSAT connectivity.

Cheque processing project

The first private project Comat has undertaken is a cheque processing project for a US bank. The cheques for the bank go to a central clearing house where they are scanned. The scanned cheques are then sent to the telecentres through a Web interface provided by the client. There are about 40 centres in Karnataka from where this project is handled, says Nalige. The company has 60-70 employees working on this project. The pilot was started in Mysore, Coorg, Mandya and Chamrajnagar. Now, it has been extended to Udupi, and Comat plans to take it to Kolar. Comat has been working on this project for the past six to eight months. Employees get trained on the application developed by the client, as part of which they handle dummy cheques for practice. Once they enter production, they begin to get online cheques.

Nalige says quality management tools are built into the application that judges the performance of the employee. The centres follow strict security measures. An employee of a particular telecentre cannot log into another telecentre. Also, they log in with biometrics tests, to augment security.

Comat is also in talks with two multinational BPOs regarding sending work to the telecentres. “We are asking them to send their basic work to us,” says Nalige.

In the next one year, Comat aims to have 3,000 seats from these two BPOs. It has also started a rural medical transcription project. It has tied up with clinical documentation technology and services provider Spheris for this. Comat will train people and then they will be absorbed by Spheris, according to Nalige. These people will work from the rural centres, and Spheris will pay Comat for using their infrastructure.

Comat also uses its centres for providing distance education. It has tied up with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. It has developed study material on basic computer training in Kannada and offers English language courses. The company has also collaborated with Airtel and Vodafone to process the pre-paid forms in rural areas. They get the forms to the nearest rural centre and upload the data on the service providers’ server. This helps to hasten the process. This is in the pilot project stage. “We are doing it in and around Bangalore,” says Nalige. Initially there was a lot of scepticism, and in the first two to three months the footfall was low. Comat has worked closely with the government to promote the Nemmadi project, and now the image has improved considerably. Raw talent is available, says Nalige. People have the basic common sense and intelligence. Comat has found people who have passed tenth or twelvth and sometimes even graduates.

Redefining agent’s role

SerWizSol, a Tata enterprise, has a 90-seater BPO at Ethakota in rural Andhra Pradesh, operational since November 2007. Sharing details at the Nasscom meet in Mumbai, the company said it plans to increase the headcount to 250 by June. The company also has a BPO in rural Gujarat in Mithapur, a 100-seater, which began operations in mid-January of this year.

These BPOs are redefining the role of a call centre agent. He/she may not necessarily be a graduate or Class 12 pass, but one with intent to learn and with good communications ability. The company says some of the challenges it has faced include irregular power, poor, unreliable telecom facility, absence of computer-literate staff, disinclination of supervisors to move to rural areas, transportation difficulties from neighbouring villages, lack of skills, and customer orientation. A key advantage, though, is adequate availability of employable talent.

shamik@thehindu.co.in

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Farming out