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The Indian Call Center Journey

            

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Indian Call Centers – Myths and Realities Contd...

TABLE III
THE INDIAN CALL-CENTER MILESTONES

Mid 1990s

GE, Swiss Air, British Airways set up captive call center units for their global needs.

May 1999

Following increasing interest in the IT-enabled services sector, NASSCOM held the first IT-enabled services meet. Over 600 participant firms plan to set up medical transcription outfits and call centers.

December 1999

A NASSCOM-McKinsey report says that remote services could generate $ 18 billion of annual revenues by 2008.

May 2000

Venture Capitalists rush in. Make huge investments in call centers.

September 2000

More than 1,000 participants flock to the NASSCOM meet to hear about new opportunities in remote services. Though the medical transcription business is not flourishing, call centers seen as a big opportunity.

Quarter 4 2000

NASSCOM report, indicates that a center could be set up with $ 1 million. Gold rush begins. Everyone, from plantation owners to lorry-fleet operators, wanted to set up centers.

Quarter 1, 2001

Most of the call centers are waiting for customers. New ventures still coming up: capacity of between 25 seats and 10,000 seats per company. Small operators discover that the business is a black hole where investments just disappear. They look for buyers, strategic partnerships and joint ventures. Brokers and middlemen make an entry to fix such deals.

However, most of these people entered the field, without having any idea as to what the business was all about. Their knowledge regarding the technology involved, the marketing aspects, client servicing issues etc was very poor. They assumed that by offering cheaper rates, they would be able to attract clients easily. They did not realize that more than easy access to capital and real estate, the field required experience and a sound business background. Once they decided to enter the field, they found that most of the capital expenditure (in form of building up the infrastructure5) occurred even before the first client was bagged. These players seemed to have neglected the fact that most successful call centers were quite large and had either some experience in the form of promoters having worked abroad in similar ventures or previous experience with such ventures or were subsidiaries of foreign companies.

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5] The typical cost of setting up a call center with 100 people worked out to about Rs 50 million in 2000. This included premises, telecommunication infrastructure, computing equipment and cost of meeting regulatory requirements including obtaining DoT clearances.