Chandigarh is e-ready

With major IT companies converging on Chandigarh, there are tremendous opportunities for job seekers. Naveen S. Garewal looks at the readiness of Chandigarh as the new IT destination.

THE ‘sting operation’ conducted by UK’s Sun newspaper, involving an employee of Infinity e-search, may have put Indian BPO operations under a cloud and caused concern in IT circles but outsourcing continues to be big business in India.

Indian call centres, BPOs and software development companies continue to boom. But noticeably there has been a shift of focus from Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh to Chandigarh and Mohali, making them the hottest new IT destinations in the country. Chandigarh has moved up today to be among the top five E-Readiness – Indian States (IT leaders), stated to be on a par with Tamil Nadu and those mentioned above. The E-Readiness Assessment Report is brought out annually by the Union Government, categorising each state’s IT-preparedness, and is based on factors such as market, political, regulatory and infrastructure environments available there.

To promote Chandigarh as an IT destination, the UT Administration proudly quotes from The New York Times, "As tens of thousands of service jobs continue to flow to India from the US and Europe, small cities like Chandigarh offer even lower labour costs than India’s "first-tier" technology hubs."

The growth of the neighbouring Mohali as an IT centre too has helped Chandigarh become a preferred IT destination. Punjab’s aggressiveness in promoting itself as an IT destination has further helped Chandigarh. Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh, spent four days in and around Hyderabad telling CEOs of companies like GESICS and Satyam that given the infrastructure cost and IT environment and manpower availability, it made much better sense to come to Mohali rather than anywhere else in the country. Those looking at the region actually prefer Chandigarh to Mohali. Firstly, it is expected that a union territory would have more political stability and would have a person of stature as its Administrator. Secondly, there’s the perception that there are lesser bureaucratic hassles in Chandigarh for procuring licences, etc.

India’s new IT destination is even beginning to introduce the ‘second’ or even ‘third’ job concept of the West into the city. Youngsters, housewives and even the retired are experimenting with a ‘night job’ that pays Rs 10,000 or more and allows them to use their day time in pursuit of other interests.

This is counters the allegations about ‘producing clerks of a different kind’ at the call centres and BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing). People are choosing to work in IT companies and those offering ITES (IT enabled services) on a long-term basis. They have begun to look at call centres and BPOs with a career in mind rather than treating them as stop-gap jobs. The high salaries ‘simple graduates’ make in the centres that have mushroomed in and around the city is something not many people could have visualised a few years ago.

The Chandigarh region can now boast of a dozen-odd world-class call centres. The BPOs have come up by the hundreds because they are not as capital intensive to set up call centres. The BPOs handle smaller jobs such as back-office operations like payroll data entry, etc. Rapid growth in the BPOs is a direct outcome of the slowing down of revenue in the hardcore IT sector after the bursting of the big IT bubble. Also, some smaller IT companies have jumped into the fray to have their slice of the IT cake too. This dynamics has thrown up tremendous opportunities for job seekers in the region. The call centres and BPOs currently employ around 10,000 people for the 3000 seats available per shift at the BPOs and the 2000 at the call centres.

The employment generation potential is tremendous. During his visit to the city in April last year, NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik showed a lot of optimism for IT growth in the region. "Despite the growing global backlash against outsourcing of call centres and back-office operations to India, the country has emerged as a global hub for corporate back-office services and will employ over 4 lakh persons by 2006," he said.

"The bottomline is that the Chandigarh region is now considered to be an important IT destination. World leaders in IT have expressed their desire to be associated with this phenomenal growth. Once that happens, Punjab’s dilemma on coping with its dwindling agricultural produce and shrinking land holdings might be resolved." The promised infrastructure has given the industry a boost, but the initiative of the Punjab Government in luring investors by offering irresistible incentives has paid rich dividends, says Dr Sanjay Tyagi, Additional Director, Software Technology Park of India (STPI), which registers every IT company beginning its operations in the state.

Big names associated with Chandigarh and neighbouring Mohali include Infosys, Quark, Universal Cyber Infoway, Excel Callnet, IDS Infotech, E2B Solutions, DELL, Rana Infomatics, IRM, IRD and E3R. IBM Daksh and Convergys too will be starting operations here shortly.

Chandigarh’s IT Director, Vivek Atray, says: "Once IBM Daksh and Convergys (it plans to generate 20,000 jobs) set up shop, the call centres will get a further boost and many more jobs will come up. DELL, which has a capacity of around 800 work seats currently, will shortly have 1500 seats. It’s a blessing for ordinary graduates, who with simple language skills will get absorbed in plush jobs, which could be transformed into careers for many." The Punjab Government expects Quark City, coming up at Mohali, to generate direct as well as indirect employment for around one lakh people.

Though the projections of experts cannot be taken to be absolute truth, it cannot be denied that the job market is bound to perk up. Atray says that Chandigarh and its neighbouring town would not reach a saturation point for jobs even till the next two decades if the IT industry continues to grow at the present rate. With Panchkula too planning to set up a 200-acre IT park, the IT potential of the region will grow further.

Trends have already indicated that the IT and IT-enabled jobs will further boost the "two or three" jobs per day culture in the city. There are many willing to go for their 9-5 job and then make some extra money at night. "The logical expansion of the BPOs and call centres lies in networking of families where housewives and retired people could work from home on their PCs. This becoming commonplace is not a very distant reality," says Tyagi.

The Administration has already established the Chandigarh Technology Park (CTP) for IT and IT-enabled service industry. Spread over 111 acres, it will house companies like EDC and Infosys. The DLF builders will construct state-of-art complexes to meet individual corporate needs. The Administration has also decided to lay a 250-acre ‘Technology Habitat’ adjacent to the CTP. This will house IT companies, residential complexes and have top-of-the-line infrastructure, uninterrupted power supply and Wi-Fi environment.

Once the CTP and the Technology Habitat become a working reality, the focus of the IT industry is bound to shift from call centres — where people do ‘the lowest of the low-end work in IT’ — to software development and Knowledge Processing and Outsourcing (KPOs) outfits, providing more opportunities for professionals like doctors and lawyers doing specialised IT work.

Despite an ‘awakening’ about BPOs and call centres, there is little information available to aspirants desirous of pursuing a career in this field. When a youngster, Rajesh Henjarappa, wanted some basic information on the subject, he had to post his message on the Romanian Call Centre forum. He wrote, "I am Rajesh from India. I have decided to build my career in a call centre or BPO. Can anybody please suggest what are the things that I should concentrate on to become like other call centre or BPO boys or girls? How should I improve communication skills, accent, pronunciation, etc? Is there any specific web sites or videos, tutorials or (book with author name if you know) that could give details? I have tried to search on Google and Yahoo but did not get any specific response." And guess what? He did not get a single response on the forum, but hundreds of worldwide BPOs put out the services they offered.

To cater to the growing need for such skills, the Department of IT, Chandigarh, has launched a training module called C-TOSS (Chandigarh- Training on Soft Skills) that helps improve communication, interpersonal skills and other IT-enabled specific skills. The course runs through 162 hours and is run in collaboration with Hewitt Associates, a global outsourcing and consulting firm. C-TOSS also focuses on other industries like biotech, healthcare, pharma and electronics. Once adequately trained manpower becomes available, Chandigarh is bound to become home to other IT-enabled services, raising the employment potential further.

Currently, the Indian BPO market is worth a mere Rs 650 crore. Estimated global BPO revenue was $450 billion in 2004. Though there are no figures available yet about the revenue the Chandigarh region generates from call centres and BPOs, but software exports — valued at Rs 7 crore in 1998-99 — touched Rs 275 crore last year and are projected to be around Rs 1000 crore after three years. A major chunk would come from BPOs and call centres.

A report prepared by McKinsey in collaboration with Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies) — which represents and sets the tone for public policy for the Indian software industry — has estimated the Indian ITES industry will grow on a year-on-year growth rate of 65 per cent and will be between $21-24 billion by 2008. The report says that India can capture 25 per cent of the global BPO offshore market and 12 per cent of the market for other services such as animation, content development and design services.

Another recently released study called ‘India’s Cutting Edge in Services’, conducted by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), says: "India will be well poised to capture six per cent share of the global market in services and IT software by 2008-09 as against its present share of three per cent. In the next few years, the growth rate of IT and IT services will be over 45 per cent." Chandigarh can hope for a substantial portion of this to come its way.

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