Life @Drishti

April 14th, 2011 Sushant

Someone told me that over-thinking and over-analyzing never work.

When I had an offer from Drishti, I wasn’t hundred per cent sure about it, but I decided to go for it. Eight months on I can say it was the right decision. Of course it hasn’t been perfect plainly because of lots of contradictions from the industry perception of a product development environment but yes it has been one helluva experience!!

One of the things that tempted me was the opportunity to work with an Indian product based company, so I could be at the epicenter of all the action – working at the HQ. Also, the fact that there was a lot of emphasis on ownership of your work went with a lot of what I believed in as a professional. The funda is simple – you give the best when you work for yourself. Some might accuse us of being selfish, but that’s a simple fact!!

Getting in here was admittedly a very lengthy process and I honestly never thought that I could make it. Got lucky, I suppose.The selection process ensures you get to work with like minded people. And as they say, it’s the people who you work with that really matters.

Once I joined Drishti, everything seemed different here and by everything I mean everything. Coming from a large organization that was process heavy, Drishti was a welcome change. I’m not saying there’s no fixed process flow here, but only so much to keep things stable and running without overriding onto your professional space. The result is that you spend more time doing the real stuff – the stuff you like. And you don’t have to “market” your work to your boss or anyone else for that matter. There’s enough transparency to ensure your work gets recognized.

I am part of the RnD team, contributing to the development of Ameyo – Drishti’s contact center solution. Being a product company, there’s little scope of slipping into the comfort zone. Constant feature additions and innovation have to be done for making better product and being competitive in the market. What amazed me was how easily Ameyo can be customized to cater to the wide variety of requirements.

Coming back to work culture – One of the interesting practices in our RnD team is “Chaupal”. The aim is to look beyond the technical aspect of our work; to get to know the bigger picture. Its been just two editions for me till now but it has given us a chance to interact with the other departments and get to understand the business point of view for product development. The base idea is to get us to think beyond the code. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come up with new product ideas. Its refreshing, its fun and it gives a feeling what a great team we have got here.

As Kurt Cobain would have put it, “Smells like team spirit”.

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Judging Product Anusandhan Pratiyogitya

March 24th, 2011 Kshiti Garg

I would like to share my first experience as a “Judge”. The opportunity came by as our RnD team was preparing an intra-department competition they call – Product Anusandhan Pratiyogitya.

Kshiti’s thoughts pro-ceasing: A quick picture develops in my mind of a technical gyan session which can never be of interest to a marketing & communications person like me! But yet again I got a proof of imagination running wild with the actual event being a total opposite of what I had expected. It was really fun!

Now the concept of the Pratiyogita – as explained to me by Prince Singh (Sr. Team lead -L2, Drishti) was about giving the RnD team an opportunity to glance back at their learnings and achievements and sharing the knowledge gathered while working on Ameyo and related applications.

For this, the battleground had three participant teams and a consultant group. Each team was given a topic related to a definite field of application development in ICT. They were required to prepare a 15 minute presentation on the need and evolution of each domain, the current markets, major players of the domain and Drishti’s direct competitors, their application offerings and Ameyo’s readiness and scope to hit the target market need.

Teams and their topics:

  • PRI – Hosted Contact Center
  • SIP – Workforce Management
  • RTP – Unified Communications

Three days before the final ‘Pratiyogita’, Prince comes to my seat and says –“Please accept to co-judge the competition with Sachin Bhatia.”

Kshiti’s thoughts pro-ceasing: Apprehension would be the most undertone word to describe what I felt at that moment. I was to co-judge the event with Sachin Bhatia – He is one of the co-founders of Drishti, VP, Business Development in designation, a thought leader and product expert. I am and will always be absolutely naïve in product knowledge in comparison to him!

I was certain it’s a prank! But a shocked Kshiti was told it is a soon to happen fact! This is how I was on-board to co-judge Product Anusandhan Pratiyogita.

About the actual event –

We all saw a new found unrest among the RnD wing. We saw participants glued to their computer screens or holding extended team brainstorming sessions.

Kshiti’s thoughts pro-ceasing: None of them actually thought of doing some match fixing with the judges (much to my dismay… :-( sic!). I would have been easily pleased with some gifts!

Finally the D-day arrived and we all gathered in the board room for the presentation. The scene was a mix of brilliant young engineers fumbling their way while publicly presenting their hard work.

Kshiti’s thoughts pro-ceasing: It’s kind of amusing to see how we always fight for attention and when we have attention from a group, we go all nervous and blank!

We began with the PRI team talking about Hosted Call Centers. Then we had the RTP team presenting Unified Communications followed by SIP team discussing about WFM. Besides having interesting topics to talk about, much credit goes to all three teams on the coverage, content quality, team participation and overall presentation for making the event a ‘learning & fun’ experience.

Sachin took the responsibility for checking the preparedness of the teams with his questions and I concentrated more on the participation and content of each team.

Kshiti’s thoughts pro-ceasing: I was equally nervous at the beginning of the presentations thinking what intelligent questions could a marketing person ask product developers? But again I surprised myself when I got to know that I was also fairly knowledgeable about the topics covered with a few questions to ask too! (That calls for a toast!)

After collating the individual scores, we had a clear winner – The PRI team (Hosted Contact Center). Their coverage of the evolution of HCC and Ameyo’s competitors was impressive. They had some good points on ‘Why Hosted?’ is the next big thing for ICT industry. Their confident & prompt answers in the Q & A round worked in their favor.

Well this doesn’t undermine efforts of the other two teams.

Kshiti’s thoughts pro-ceasing: If only they could have thought of some gifts for me, we would have had people sharing the winning trophy! I hope the RnD team calls me on-board for further such events! After all – one should always hope for a better future! :-)

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My journey into the world of call center technology

January 20th, 2011 Abirami

Every job is special to every one for various reasons. In a way, DRISHTI is very special to me as it is my first job. Once I completed my MBA degree it was Drishti who took me aboard. It has been 6 months of association with Drishti and the experience gathered is the start of a very steep learning curve. In every aspect including like customer relations management, Industry knowledge, people management etc., Drishti has given me the training which would shape my career very well.

I started my career with zero knowledge about call center technology or ICT domain. My mind was full of questions like:

* What is call center? How does it work?

* How does the industry work? Who are the key people in the call center?

* What is contact center software? Etc., etc.

The training sessions I was given explained these things to me. I was given clarity from the basics to the industry dynamics.

Now was the time for me to step out and gain some real field experience. And as expected, it was exciting and challenging at the same time. The client has enquired for a supply chain management and product tracker information system. The question that raced my mind was – How will Ameyo support/enable any kind of business other than the call centers? But as I started pondering on the solution capabilities of Ameyo as were described to me in the product training sessions, I became confident on how perfectly Ameyo can map to this requirement.

My learning from the very first field experience was – Ameyo is not merely a call center suite; rather it is an advanced communication technology platform which has the capabilities to support and manage business processes and customer interactions.

My profile includes approaching the SMB call centers in Bangalore region and understanding their technology requirements. These small centers are mainly start-ups and along with the existing ones (both International & domestic BPOs). They need to be identified through partners and other lead sources and have to be targeted with right technology to address their process dynamics. Again targeting these segments is very challenging due to various facts.

The Market itself is very dynamic and highly unstable. I remember this news published a year back in some news paper saying 90% of the small call centres die in the first 6 months of commencement of operations. Back then, it was a mere news piece to me since I had no connection to this industry as a student.

Today, I realize and understand how that news might have impacted the industry players. I feel that this should be an eye opener to the entrepreneurs who aim to set up their own BPO business. Most of these start-ups die in the initial run phase itself not because of the decreased inflow of business but purely because of miscalculation in the business strategy to be implemented.

The issue can be very aptly addressed with the right technology and a good amount of operational expenditure can be very easily saved. I feel it is extremely important for any aspirant to understand that the right technology can really help them to improve their productivity with minimum cost. Choosing the right technology is the only way to extend the life cycle of any call center business. The one time investment they are making over technology would get them returns much higher than they could have ever calculated. Solutions like Ameyo will deliver them their ROI in the initial 6 months itself and that would just be the beginning.

This is my small message to the BPO entrepreneurs – Minimise your recurring costs by investing in the right technology. Associate with a technology partner that can deliver timely support.

Learning from the mistakes of other people would give them a clearer view of the opportunities available to them and would certainly help in defining a more stable and promising road map into future.

Now this might have been some heavy dosage of gyaan…

So, to end this on an undertone, I would come back from where I started – my field experience. ‘Field Sales’ is a challenging profile but the best part is that I get an opportunity to meet the new and existing customers directly. This in turn helps me to understand the market, competition as well as customer perspective. On a more personal note, I would say that I believe more than ever that meeting new people is a great motivation and increases self-confidence. This is purely because each experience like this is unique and tests you to apply the fundas you have learnt over your educational years.

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The future’s tight…the future’s IP

January 15th, 2011 Naveen

Over the years we have been hearing about the demise of IP as open source takes ground and entrenches itself deeper into the global business psyche. For people like me it’s more of a rudimentary myth that shall duly die down as businesses line up to reach out more vigorously to its customers.

The prophesying minds of open source claim of the underlying freedom, technology sharing and greater empowerment to users and customers alike as the mainstays of this thrust which overcomes the detraction of minimalist focus on innovation. This alone has led soothsayers to predict the beginning of the end of the IP focus.

I personally believe intellectual property was, is and will continue to be a critical force in driving enterprises to innovate. Yes, I duly agree that moving towards open source means hefty budgetary savings for the end customers who don’t have to pay huge amounts of money for software that doesn’t have highly differentiated intellectual property (IP). But as the market moves towards a high level customer focus where technology becomes the only differentiator, there has been, and will always be, a huge market for innovations. This can only be achieved with focus and investment in creating an innovation that provides intellectual property to the enterprise to deliver superior value to customers as well as investors. Ideally open source offering can complement IP creation where developers focus on pain points of customers thereby optimizing service delivery that suits best for a business plan or strategy.

In order to improve customer satisfaction and service experiences which significantly haven’t changed for years due to lack of innovation in doing things differently, an innovation focus can work wonders. Some great technology IP can sincerely help to “break open” this market, and dramatically improve both customer satisfaction, as well as business opportunities for service providers. The opportunities are abundant to create IP that provides business continuity.

Open Source advantages of low acquisition cost and high reliability are dwarfed by the IP benefits of offering high technical support and software product maintenance along with low risk in adopting the solution. Yes, there are disadvantages too with IP like high acquisition cost and low reliability but the same goes with open source too which provides low technical support and software product maintenance and high risk value in adopting the solution.

Overtime we have seen that open source has been forcing entrepreneurs and investors to think in new ways about a new set of problems. Also, the great move towards being open has taken many by surprise. Having said so, I seek to conclude with a belief that open source will surely and aptly help drive a focus on improved solutions for customers–particularly in nascent markets but a creation of unique intellectual property will surely play a critical role in fueling this new push for innovation.

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IT Vendor Vs CIOs

January 4th, 2011 Ishdeep Singh

A few days back, I was at a CIO conference organized by one of the biggest IT vendors here in Vietnam which focused on “Technology Innovation”, amongst other things. A gathering of about 50 CIOs was invited to explore the adoption of new software-based technology, its associated merits, challenges and opportunities. It was an opportunity to engage, that once again failed to engage the IT leaders.

The group had a fair representation across industries from telecom, manufacturing, banking, insurance, retail; ITES and some more. The agenda was fairly simple, with the expectation to understand how different industry segments view software based technology and what has been the journey so far. Of course, it was about market sizing and qualifying leads that could result in some business from the vendor’s perspective.

Discussions started off with differing perspectives on filters that every CIO applied to their business operations to determine the suitability of software solutions in their environment. Some amongst them included the kind of work undertaken, number of software projects deployed, volume, applications used, and not the least, ROI on such initiatives. In the same breath, challenges were also debated listing cost and resilience of connectivity, licensing impact, cultural issues, and again ROI.

Within some time, it was evident that the vendor and CIOs were talking different languages; the former talking about the technological innovation, and the latter focusing on business benefit. With no translator or moderator, the two conversations found it tough to converge on common ground.

Post panel networking had an interesting insight shared by the vendor CEO with the anchor; the CIOs today are not willing to discuss technology anymore. This is making the task of selling to them a lot more difficult as compared to what it was. For sales persons to get into the customers’ shoes and then have a discussion requires different skill sets than currently available.

Feedback from one of the CIO- “Mr IT Vendor, what else do you expect from the CIOs?” Over the last decade, expectation levels from the CIO have shifted from a technology advisor to a business advisor. CIOs have seized this opportunity (not challenge) and many have gone over the tipping point to take on incremental roles in business. To expect this level of discussion from the same vendors who always have “IT business alignment” as one of the top 3 priorities reflects that they too need to embrace the same change that they have been preaching so far.

My perspective: Most who come to sell are only trained to sell technology and more than that, are trained to do a monologue rather than spending and a few meetings in befriending the CIO and knowing him and his organization. We may have some exceptions to this rule but I will stand by my view… the reason why for non-technology serious debates there are less takers.

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Technology for Inclusive growth!

December 1st, 2010 Naveen

Recently I came across a few innovative solution requirements, and no they weren’t some high tech enterprise with loads of funds in the kitty that was seeking something outlandish to provide to its customers. The requirements came from a very non-descript agencies working in an even more remote and unheard of districts in the Indian hinterland. This was what worth catching the eye that how technological innovations are reaching out and helping the real India making governments more accountable and enabling the great thrust towards a more inclusive growth.

In the current scenario where more than 70% of the Indian population still living in the rural areas with regular upward growth in the literacy rates and stupendous growth in the mobile telephony penetration, the requirements were to provide a solution that were robust information systems tailor made for the rural scenario. A system that was reachable and usable by masses while being simple to use, understand and comprehend, a system that was cost-effective and finally a system that was secure and relevant to the use it was to be put to.

The backdrop of the requirement being MGNREGS implemented across the nation to guarantee minimum 100 days of employment for poor sections of the society; be it in the cities or the rural areas. A major flaw in the globally appreciated scheme was need for its regular monitoring & supervision for resource optimization as well as systematically reduces the underlying corruption associated with the monetary transactions involved. The intent was to provide the real beneficiaries with a system which was trustworthy, reduced the inefficiencies of the manual system, and was fast in disseminating the deliverables and intent for which it was formed.

Mobile telephony penetration came in handy and the most valuable ingredient to be utilized to overcome scenarios of lack of proper information sharing and management of welfare plans and procedures marred ineffective by poor communication and awareness leading to negligible accountability and increased corruption.

I shall detail the most path-breaking requirement that came to us where the need was to cater to around 1 lakh farmers in a remote district in the state of Rajasthan whereby the system was capable of handling and managing a subsequent increase year on year in user base. The basic need was to manage scenarios of inbound and outbound interactions with an IVR System for both inbound and outbound functions an integrated SMS system. The system was supposed to be a robust information dissemination system that has mass reach and which was centrally monitored, it was required to leverage the increase in literacy rate and telephony penetration to provide effective reporting, make authorities accountable, gave users more avenues for support and reduced dissatisfaction.

The plan was to cover more than 1000 villages in Rajasthan, with each village having a co-operative agency SPOC connected to 10-100 farmers for collection of cattle milk on daily basis. The agency was to procure the milk and sell it to government dairies on daily basis. The payment to each agency by the government was to be enabled online and managed centrally at the agency Head office. There was a need for setting up a of a mobile payment system for the payment to be transferred to villagers selling there cattle milk. The agency SPOC stationed at the village was to call the central IVR located at the government centre, and upon authentication the IVR system was to guide the caller to a virtual payment system very much similar to a credit card payment or a prepaid phone recharge.

The IVR system was then to seek inputs for the pre-existing mobile number to be entered for virtual payment transfer; in this case it was to be a villager who had sold milk to the agency SPOC. Once the virtual money is transferred to a villagers account, the villager and the agency SPOC were to receive a message through an SMS for the successful/unsuccessful virtual payment transfer. The villager could redeem the money in the phone (virtual account) to make purchases at local system registered provision store. Once the villager goes to purchase provisions at a local shop, he / she was to follow a similar activity like the agency SPOC for transfer a virtual payment to pre-registered provision store owners phone account (virtual account). The store owner was then allowed to redeem the accumulated amount on regular basis from the government head office along with certain percentage add-on. The villager also at the end of the month could redeem the accumulated virtual amount on regular basis from the government head office.

From the time I heard of this noble idea I was all praise for the brain behind it and really appreciated the acumen in understanding the pain points of implementing such immensely bulky policy decisions and that too in a rural landscape. This idea was the best solution to allow more accountability into the working of the agencies delivering services as well as providing the end users the benefits of reduced dependence on middle-men, procedural faults and subsequent delays, and cent percent relief from the rampant corruption inherent into the system. The government was also assured of the right usage of resources and monitor that the social schemes like MGNREGS were culminating and delivering the intent for which they were initiated.

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Technology as an enabler for NGOs to survive in corporate business environment

November 10th, 2010 Girisha R

NGO’s today are like corporates – they operate like them and they should keep on doing so to not just survive but beat the prevalent competition.

About NGO’s and History:

The conventional definition of an NGO says that NGOs or Non-governmental organizations are private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development. To put it simply, these are autonomous bodies that have either a community or environmental focus. They address varieties of issues such as religion, emergency aid, or humanitarian affairs. In India alone we have close to 1.59 million NGO’s /NPO’s (non-profit organizations) of various scales.

Major sources of NGO funding are membership dues, the sale of goods and services, grants from international institutions or national governments, and private donations. However, with increasing number of NGOs surfacing and shrinking aids from governmental organizations, NGOs are finding life increasingly difficult. With time, the initial goals and ideas might have remained same for each NGO but the path to reach them has undergone major changes. These were the detours necessary for survival and sustainability.

Goal of any NGO is –

- The very first goal is to attract the supporters and funders

- To create market awareness about their goals and missions activities

Since every NGO would require the right amount of funding to materialize their goals, a major chunk of it would be required to be spent on marketing & gathering supporters. Thus, there would be outflow of funds in various forms in order to be able to raise more funds. Striking a balance in the flow of funds is a challenge similar to any new-age corporate in today’s business environment.

NGOs are aware of the fact that –

-    To keep the interest of a supporters or funder any NGO should come with new interesting concepts to  highlight the issue in hand in order to attract more followers

-    To do all these activities they should have the right resources both human and technology

-    To hire industry standard people one is required to spend equal compensation pay package like any corporate, e.g. salaries and the perks.

-    To gather a crowd, market the concept, to increase supporter base they need to innovate in terms of marketing strategies.

-    To maintain the supporters/ funders, regular follow ups and a customized contact strategy needs to be implemented.

Solution –

To address the challenges faced by any NGO, there are advanced technology solutions that not just add efficiency to the business processes but are also easy on the pocket. Some examples illustrating an effective use of technology for managing day-to-day business are:

-    To keep a Data base of supporters managed Database services and CRM is required

-    To call each existing and prospective supporter and to create more awareness in much faster way, a proper call manager or dialer technology is required

The need is of a solution that can empower the NGO with a faster and more efficient way to reach out to more people in order to spread awareness and develop a supporters/ funders’ base. The solution has to be easy to use, operate and manage since the business focus lies not towards the technology but the pre-set goals. Advancements in communication technology has gives us software-based interaction management suites that are very effective in handling the complete fund raising as well as market awareness campaigns. Some solutions provide an even higher level of automation by implementing customized contact strategies for the target groups to help achieve a focused awareness goal for the NGO. And all this is available at costs that are affordable and deliver a much higher ROI. The right solution can be a real enabler for an NGO and can help them innovate on the strategies to keep ahead with the corporate business environment.

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Now even I share the vision (Drishti)…this is how I see it…

October 1st, 2010 Payel Basu

What happened to people when they find themselves misfit in a highly competitive IT industry; and lost in the smoke of dirty office politics and non-employee friendly company policies, target pressure and failed in the attempt of making eligible for the survival….???

Nothing!!

But let me tell you that I am one of them who lost all hopes about regaining energy, potential and self-confidence and was shattered…. Thanks to the highly sophisticated designation given to me; beneath which it was frustration of proving myself right but not able to stand as no one supports you nowadays if they don’t find their benefit.

Now Drishti… a breath of fresh air with highly potential workforce, young, energetic and most importantly CIVILIZED…. Found me fittest in the race of survival and welcomed in their world. My experience was at the first day weird when I found no one is whipping (obviously by words, don’t forget we are sophisticated) their sub-ordinates for not making targets fulfilled, nobody is blaming others for their work not getting completed; a cheerful, fun loving workforce showing a proof of basic etiquettes (which is forgotten by many big fishes in the Industry) and work ethics.

I was surprised. But also made a point to be a part of Drishti Team through every thick and thin.

I am given a responsibility of managing the Business Development initiatives for the APAC , Philippines and Australian market for Drishti’s very own product Ameyo Suite , a highly innovative Contact Center Solution.

My first expression was what is Contact Center?? Even better what is a Call Center and how it works??

I never had any experience of how a call center works or what are the procedures they are following to make their employees’ life easy.

Through number of trainings got to know about the basic processes and mechanisms a call center follows; also the contact center solution is a software solution which facilitates these processes. Or I should say they enabled me with all equipments so that I can make myself comfortable while pitching this product to International Territory.

Drishti is actually the brainchild of visionaries who predicted the immense potential in huge but untouched BPO industry. And thus made a revolution with Ameyo.

Drishti is a leading provider for Contact Center Solution (better known as Customer Interaction management Solution) which is Ameyo Suite. It is an amazing product which is a must need for ever expanding BPO business as it is a best fit for their dialer requirements and also increasing productivity of the agents by the expert use of Computer Telephony Integration. Also the best part of this solution is it has many unique monitoring features which make it more powerful over the traditional systems and other enterprise class contact center solution providers. It is customizable according to the customer’s changing need. We have an enthusiastic Development and Support team who ensures every customer queries should be answered and also every possible customization can be processed.

Not only in India Drishti has already marked its footsteps in different parts of the world. It has its branch office in Philippines and partner access in other continents as well.

Why Drishti Philippines Inc???

Internet shows numerous results about the call center rave in Philippines. But Drishti could sniff that opportunity much earlier that it has a huge market for BPO industry but not well explored. Our visionaries took the first step and made wonder.

They understood pretty well that it is now or never; as if they underwent more speculations about whether to enter or not others didn’t bother to drag them behind.

After having the good and bad taste of different International markets, Drishti wanted to move on and expand the Business Development Initiatives in the APAC market.

So… How the APAC market tastes?? Good, Bad, Bitter?? Shall we enter (yes, no, may be)??

Mmmm, let me give you a very honest but politically correct answer. APAC market is vulnerable but still unexplored. Why??? Read below….

1. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Indonesia – Good. Why they are good??? Will let you know at the end. These are the three countries where our feet were already grounded through local partners who have a considerable hold on the customers. So decent businesses are coming in from these countries but still need to grow faster. BD and market research team, which I am also a part of (why not to take credit ya.. psss) doing every bit of it (Be it writing Blogs, doing SEO, taking part in different Events and many more), as a result Drishti has own many accolades.

2. Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan – Taste not only bad but bitter as well. First, they have a language barrier as most of them don’t know English. As a result when anyone starts talking in English with real flow they do nothing but hang up the phone. But we should enter this market because it is unattended and with good strategy potential business can be made.

Go to Market Strategies: Strategies reserved to Drishti only

1. For the second segment we are targeting, the strategy should be making you familiar with the people, language and customs. The first day I approached companies resulted in confusion for me and for them as well as both of us do not know even how to greet each other forget about having business discussion. But I already studied much about the kind of business it can give as most of them have domestic BPOs and also enterprises who act like call center and sell call center solution as well. I found it very important to learn the local language and also educate them over phone how we can help them to do business and grow in foreign markets. Got to manage meetings. Now the front ending team will take their move to crack the deal.

2. For the first segment, remember I have rated it as good. They understand English well. So the main barrier has been won. But we cannot expect business from this segment also without proper market coverage. So we need to be more aggressive. Our business managers are really doing great and also trying to knot more alliances to keep up the good hope.

So, It’s about me, myself in Drishti, my responsibilities, strategies…enough now.

Wish all the best to Drishti, Ameyo and My team.

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Mera Gaon (Village) Mera BPO

August 17th, 2010 sachin

Few Days back I had the privilege to meet with some of the pioneers in the Rural BPO space in India.
This was at NDTV studios in New Delhi where I was invited to be a panelist on “Money Mantra” a show hosted by Mr. Pankaj Pachauri

(About the show – Sponsored by Reliance Money, it is a discussions based show dealing with the economic issues and initiatives in the country. Many prominent experts and economists have been a part of the show.)

open source video, online video platform, video solution

For the episode in question, focus of the discussion was “Rural BPO and Business to Rural ” where the panelists shared their views about the scope and future of India’s rural BPO market.

Other panelists on the show were –
• Biplab Saha, Business Head, Source for Change
• Dhiraj Tolwani, CEO, B2R Technologies
• Murli Vullaganti, CEO, Rural Shores (also a prestigious client of Drishti)

The clippings of the show are attached in this blog. It’s an interesting and thought provoking discussion to watch.

The highlight of the show was of course the host Mr. Pankaj Pachauri who was ready with so much data and statistics that it gave the discussion a direction and weight rather than just being a discussion about opinions of 4 people. Parallels were drawn from the success of Indian IT industry and opportunities of job creation via moving the BPOs to Tier 2 Tier 3 cities and even villages.

My summary and take aways for entrepreneurs who plan to venture out in Rural BPO space:

a) Look for Business around you. There is a growing need of companies to interact with their customers and being able to go closer to them is a huge opportunity.

Look for B2C services like Telecom, Micro-finance, Retail services and one should be able to find opportunities. There might not be ready made opportunities so be creative.

I recently read success story of micro-finance firm SKS. I am sure they will be interested in learning how you can provide support to their customers locally.

b) Hire your core team which has experience and then build a team around it.

c) Evaluate technology which is homegrown and can be supported easily in the region. What works in the west does not work in India similarly what works in Delhi might not work in Jhunjhunu.

d) Make a business case of it rather than making it a social venture. Social ventures are good publicities but companies will trust you with their customers only if one can deliver.

I am confident that this space would see a lot of investment and experiment. This would also help in inclusive growth bringing IT to the bottom of the pyramid and creating jobs and reverse brain drain.

Exciting times Ahead!

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Asia beckons..!

July 20th, 2010 Naveen

The Asian market represents a huge area of potential for communications firms aiming to significantly boost their growth projections by 2012. The aim should be to penetrate deep into the burgeoning markets of the Asian tigers including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and upcoming economies of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

To achieve sustainable success, tech firms will have to increase their investments in the region and diversify focus on data by offering Unified Communication (UC) solutions to SME customers, which represent a significant growth sector. Researchers have constantly trumpeted growth in the overall unified application implementation market by four percent in Asia-Pacific, which is expected to be worth around $3.6 billion by 2012, making it a very promising proposition for investors. Businesses need to deliver a new business model, specializing in solution services that help organizations to enhance their functionalities.

With exceedingly high fund flow from India and China the investment scenario in South-East Asia is likely to dramatically increase topped with the markets brimming with highly skilled labour base. Tech firms need to junk the traditional channels of distribution, with need for more value-added resellers, system integrators and service providers which will coherently enable them to deliver managed services through a joint approach with service providers.

With growth inertia suffocating the European and the US markets where there are ultra-competitions and intense regulations, firms need to focus on the non traditional markets of Asia and have an expanded base of channel partners which will help them make deeper inroads into the markets across Asia Pacific and focus on the SME sector in a big way. In Asia Pacific, SME’s constitute 70-80 per cent of the business environment and it is critical for enterprises to work with this segment. In order to increase profits one has to expand into Asia. Asia is the future and has the population with enormous growth potentials and despite the downturn in the global economy, it remains promising.

Enterprises need to have a planned focus on on-demand, BPO and tertiary solutions, in untapped geographies where the company can add value with its solutions as the region is still largely untapped and has a lot of potential. SE-Asia has a lot of growth potential and tech firms have a good market for their solutions for BPO’s and enterprises alike.

The recessionary period was challenging one for all enterprises. However, it allowed for more intent focus on business and delivering what was best for customers. Tech firms were challenged to create business value with smaller budgets for enterprise. Also due to recession many companies postponed making huge new investments in communications technology except that which could not be avoided. This has resulted in a skewed up demand in the market currently. Previous years challenges have made enterprises seek maximum value out of existing investments even as they embrace new technology. The way forward is by driving the communication enablement of business systems across the enterprise and doing it by enabling smoother migration to the future.

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