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From BPO to KPO
The Indian outsourcing industry is changing. It's moving up the value chain
Alicia in Atlanta stifles a yawn. She's tired. And she just can't understand why the Least Common Multi¬ple should be higher than the Greatest Common Factor. "The least should be less," she insists. "Isn't that logical?"
Swati Chopra in Delhi stifles a yawn. She's tired too. Before Alicia there was Sarah, and Patricia and Terry and.., Some days there are six or more of these one-hour maths classes, Swati patiently explains the concepts to Sarah again. "IE yon finish early, we can go and play a game together ' (online, of course)," she says.
Chopra is one Of a new breed of knowledge workers who are challeng¬ing the "cyber coolie" label given to Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) employees. She is well qualified and had earlier worked as a lecturer in a Delhi college. More importantly, unlike the BPO sector where underem¬ployed MBAS could well man helpdesks, she is utilising her acade¬mic qualifications. She's an online teacher with Career Launcher India. Her domain: maths and science.
Career Launcher is an education company, which is foraying into knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). Says Anirudh Phadke, principal con¬sultant (eLearning) "This is just the beginning. The potential is huge." Adds K. Ganesh, founder of TutorVista, a 'new generation educa¬tion company': "There is a serious shortage of quality teachers in the US." He sees huge Federal funds flow¬ing into this area.
"Masscom (the National Associa¬tion of Software and Service Compa-nies) estimates the potential of the remote education market at $15 bil¬lion by 2008," says Chandu Nair, pres¬idents director of the Chennai-based Scope eKnowledge, which trans¬formed into a global KPO firm in 2002. The $15-billion figure contains a non-KPO element too,
It's not just education, of course. KPO is mushrooming all over. The education market is actually chicken-feed today, accounting for less than 1 per cent af the estimated $1.2 billion pie. According to Nasscom, the cur¬rent leaders are Engineering design {$400 million), Basic data search, inte¬gration & management {$300 mil-lion), and Biotech & pharma {$280 million). By 2010, there will be other segments - remote education, for one - muscling in (see chart).
More importantly, KPO is set for explosive growth. According to a Con¬federation of Indian Industry (CII) study styled "India In the New Knowl¬edge Economy", the country is all set to emerge as the global KPO hub, Eval-ueserve, a business intelligence, mar¬ket research and intellectual property (IP) firm, estimates that India will cap¬ture 71 per cent of the world KPO mar¬ket by 2010, against 56 per cent today, This puts India's share of the market at $12 billion. the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for India is close to 50 percent, BPO will also grow, but at a mote sedate 30 per cent.
The number of KPO employees will increase from 25,000 today to 250,000 in 2010. "There is tremendous poten¬tial in the KPO space”, says Nair, "(But) only companies with a strong pedi¬gree, domain expertise, clear focus on the high-end space, a proactive solu¬tion orientation and a collaborative mindset will emerge as winners."
According to the Nasscom Strategic Review for 2005: "FPO (financial process outsourcing* is already wit¬nessing explosive growth with most of the leading global financial institu¬tions beginning to outsource high-end activities such as insurance underwrit¬ing, risk assessment and equity research, financial data mining and modelling, corporate and market research. Other areas with significant latent potential for KPO include healthcare, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, legal support, intellectual property research, design and devel¬opment for automotive and aerospace industries, and animation and graphics in the entertainment sec¬tor."
All this adds up to a lot of moolah.
And most people seem to agree on the $12 billion by 2010 figure. But esti-mates of growth rates vary. That's peculiar, for they all should be start¬ing from the same base. The problem lies in the definition of KPO. A couple of years back, it was just considered high-end BPO and there was no effort to put it in a category of its own. Now that it is glowing apace, the confusion continues,
So what really is KPO? ''It is hard to say when a BPO becomes a KPO," says Alok Aggarwal, founder and chair¬man of Evalueserve. "However, KPO provides value to the client throughdomain expertise rather than process expertise."
wrulifan Engineering Hid design Ravi Aron, assistant professor of operations and information manage¬ment at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says that the easy way out would be to consider it "another flavour of BPO where the work involved calls for same measure of expertise on the part of the agents that execute these processes". In a paper to be published in the Howard Business Review later this year, he says that a knowledge process,{Kr) can be fudged by: Codifiability — "The nature of work In a KP cannot be easily codified - it is not possible to specify all possible variations of conditions, scenarios and situations that the information worker will encounter and what his response should be." • Interpretation — "The agent is expected to interpret the information that he receives, often from multiple sources to extract actionable content from it."
Judgement — "The agent is often expected to exercise judgement that is based on his mastery of a formal body of knowledge - such as market research or financial analysis - and his understanding of the business context,"
Aron cites the example of the Chennai-based OfficeTiger, which "executes some truly judgement-intensive and high-expertise processes for its clients. Its span of work includes contract research for investment banks, corpo¬rate banking support, financial state¬ment analysis for leading financial printers in the US, and equity and fixed income research. Some 40 per cent of the firm’s deadlines are an hour or less," According to Aron, "Wipro is also into significantly high-end KPO work,"
Wipro itself doesn't fully agree, which just goes to show that the con¬cept of KPO, like contact lenses, lies mainly In the eye of the beholder. "The amount of KPO under Wipro is limited right now," says Mythily Ramesh, vice-president of Wipro BPO But it has made a beginning, "Wipro's, breakthrough deal in KPO materi¬alised when it convinced a US-based client in the high-tech industry to move beyond transaction-oriented procurement processes," she says. "We are building up KPO and it is a big focus area for us. Wipro BPO is uniquely placed to ride the KPO wave as well."
Some of the confusion arises because people automatically assume that if you are operating in a high-tech vertical, you are necessarily In KPO. That/s not true. You could be servicing NASA. But if all you are doing is backend paperwork, it's hardly rocket science. Most Indian IT majors and their BPO wings are clear about this. TCS has just announced that it will be entering the KPO sector with a focus on analytics and research.
EXL, which is at No 6" in the Nass-com list of third party call centre and BPO players, started its research & ana¬lytics division in January this year. "The service spans the entire knowl¬edge services value chain/ says vice-president Pavan Bagai. who has additional responsibility of the KPO business. He doesn't see companies moving away from BPO into KPO. "BPO and KPO are two separate busi¬nesses, KPO is a high-value and high-growth business that is independent of the coexistence and growth of BPO business,"
At ICICI OneSource, fifth in the Nasscom listing, the BPO foray has come through acquisition. In Septem¬ber last year, the company acquired a 51 pet cent stake in Pipal Research; an Illinois-based outfit specialising In providing high-end customised busi¬ness research; analyses and informa¬tion services. Says ICICI OneSource managing director & CEO, Ananda Mukerji: ""this will power our entry Into the KPO sector,"
IBM is one company that is - quite inadvertently - moving the other way. It has been in the KPO game for sometime now, however, with its takeover of Daksh, a BPO company, it took a giant jump in the other direc¬tion, say industry observers, "in this sector, it is now a BPO company with some KPO on the fringes," says an analyst.
IBM doesn't agree. "The acquisition of Daksh was a strategic move by IBM to enhance its ability to deliver high-value Business Transformation Out¬sourcing (BTO) services. By combining Daksh's deep process expertise with rerM's vast research and business trans¬formation capabilities; IBM Daksh has dramatically accelerated IBM'S ability to deliver transformational and man¬aged outsourcing services, IBM now has the capability to provide ground-up Pieces* Outsourcing as well as BTO services to clients from its delivery cen¬tres in India and other parts of the world/ says Randy Walker, Asia-Pacific general manager (business transformation outsourcing), IBM Busi¬ness consulting services,
At Accenture, the BPO was set up in 2002 and currently has 5.000 people. But BFO head Pankaj Vaish says the company does not differentiate between KPO and BPO: "At Accenture, We do not do any pure low-end trans¬actional BPO work at all. That is a com¬modity market and price driven. We work more in the transformational BPO space. Our BPO work across ¦ segments - be it HR, insurance, con¬tact centre, finance and accounts. -ranges from the mid-end to the high-end. Of course, in areas like clinical data management and customer ana¬lytics, it is pure high-end KPO. In pro¬curement, too there is a lot of high-end KPO work,"
A relative newcomer is Reuters. In April 2004, the global information group chose Bangalore as one of its four key centres. The Bangalore centre at present has a strength of 1,000 pro¬fessionals of which 700 are in the data operations division, 50 in the editor¬ial division and the rest part of the back-office operations for the group's in-house financial processes. The total team strength is expected to increase to 1,500 in the next 12 months. The editorial team in Bangalore works pri¬marily on providing new types of cov¬erage for Reuters news reports, corporate earnings reports and broker research on US companies. The edito¬rial reference desk supports Reuters journalists worldwide.
At present Bangalore is the biggest centre for data operations for Reuters worldwide. Says Marion. Leslie, senior site manager: "We wanted to consoli¬date as much of our processes as possi¬ble in one place so that we could harness our synergies better, be more uniform in terms of our processes and procedures arid be more responsive to our clients," The strategy, Leslie says, has paid rich dividends with I he Ban¬galore centre being able to deliver new kinds of data like that on M&A activi¬ties and public equity offerings. Is Renters really in KMO? The answer could vary from person to per¬son. You could well ask whether McK-insey is in KPO too. The McKinsey Knowledge Centre was set up in Gurgaon in 1999. From a 10-person team, which provided low-end quick research information, it has 200 peo¬ple now and acts as a support centre for all Mckinsey's different practices. No one is doubting for a moment that It Is in knowledge space. But is it out¬sourcing?
The same question could be asked of Citibank and Amex; which came up in the early '90s, and GE, HSBC and Stanchart, which flagged off in tire second half of the decade. GE capital international Services - now Gecis Global - started in India In 1997 with 30O employees. It now straddles sev¬eral countries and has 17,000 employees, 12,000 of them in India. It is largely into BPO, but has KPO in its sights. It is now no longer a GE sub¬sidiary, which makes it easier to work for other clients.
Aggarwal of Evalueserve adds another dimension to the debate. He says that financial services companies like ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank Securities have captive outsourcing operations in India, But the opera¬tions are limited to simple accounting and data checking, and simple asset management. Evalueserve estimates that, against 3 per cent research and analysis work outsourced today (for the entire financial services sector), the figure could reach 20 per cent by 2010, But that's probably the ceiling. Even in KPO, there could he a certain amount of grunt work.
There's no stigma attached to that. But, given the knocking BPO has taken, most people would rather don new clothes. Not, however, the Chennai-based Secova Services, which is in the HR domain. While Nasscom would have us believe that most of HR is KPO territory, Secova co-founder and CEO Venkat Tadani is very clear on the subject "Secova is not a KPO. It is an HRO (Human Resource Out¬sourcing) firm. In general, if you draw a line from BPO to KPO, while the typi¬cal call centres are nearer the BPO end, HRO could be arguably put much far¬ther away from BPO and closer to KPO. For instance, in a BPO the client has the expertise and the service provider merely provides delivery. In HRO, the client expects us to be the domain expert who will not just deliver but also inform them of the best way or the right way to deal with an issue."
Adding to the confusion is this alphabet soup. You had BPO in the beginning. Then came KPO. NOW there is small battalion of these triple-barrelled acronyms -HRO, FPO, BPO, LPO (legal process outsourcing), education process outsourcing (EPO) -,,
"You will always have a defini¬tional problem," says Nair of Scope. "But you can call a cow a bull if you want, What does it matter, provided it gives milk?"
Nair says that KPO IS bound to grow in all these segments because of the inherent advantages India has. Unlike in BPO, this is not always cost.. Phadke of Career Launcher says that the rates charged by Indian tutors and Ameri¬can tutors are practically the same. "The growth in the education seg¬ment has more to do with the avail¬ability of teaching talent and the quality of content, rather than the price," says he, Adds Vaivhav Parikh of Nishith Desai Associates, which has incubated an LPO styled IPpro: "In KPO, it will be availability of scalable skilled resources which will be impor¬tant and not necessarily the cost."
This is not universally true of course. Tejinder Singh, editor-in-chief of the Brussels-based The European Weekly outsources editing and writing skills, and page make-up services from the Delhi-based TSC India. He says it costs one-fifth of what it would have in Greece, (He is based there because "it's a nice place to Jive in". In this networked world, you can do that.) "Indian costs for such services com¬pare with that in Romania and Bul¬garia," says Singh.
If cost is not important for most, what are the other advantages India has which can bring it so much KPO largesse? The big thing going for it is the availability of skilled knowledge workers. Says an Evalueserve report: "India has one of the largest pools of knowledge workers. The supply of skilled labour in India has been increasing at a steady pace. Indian universities churn out two million English-speaking graduates every year. Nearly 300,000 engineering graduates are added to the existing engineering labour pool of 2.1 mil¬lion. As of March 2002, India had 840 business schools, which Churned Out 85,000 MBAS. In terms of skilled work¬ers, while just over 5,000 IT graduates enter the labour market in Germany and 25,000 in the US each year, 120,000 enter the labour force In India." The country's army of CAS, doctors,, MR AS and lawyers are going to ensure that India dominates the KPO domain.
There are hurdles to cross, of course. The security issue - and recent events at Mphasis and elsewhere haven't helped - is one. "There is also the universal issue of accessing and retaining top talent/' says Arjun Rao, founder and CEO of ValueLabs, a soft¬ware services company 1'h.at is plan¬ning a KFO foray.
At ait industry level, says Vaish of Accenture: "India is still seen as a BPO call-centre country. The key challenge is to convince the client that we are capable of doing high-end work.'1' Adds Jacob William, president of the Banga¬lore-based Outsovnce2India, a firm that offers services in outsourcing ver¬ticals in tie-ups with specialist Compa¬nies: "The biggest challenge is establishing credibility because in this KPO segment one is providing informa¬tion based on companies that take important decisions. And this can be established through a track record." Bagai of EXL provides a list of musts.
It was set up in 2002 by Ramki, along with Shankar ktamwada (chief marketing offi¬cer) and Virray Mishra {vice-president oper¬ations). Their goal: to measurably increase (he marketing effectiveness of global mar-keters- Says Ramki, the CEO: "We help some of the best global marketers __ to increase their marketing effectiveness and Rol {return on investment) via data analytics, We call it Actionable Analytics." According to Ramki, the Markers model is about driving topline revenue growth by identifying opportunities. This Is done by working on under-utilized data lying with global marketers. The company has a team of 120 comprising marketing professionals and analysts. "One needs to overlay and Integrate all the data collected from various sources and customer touch points in order to come up with insights," says Ramki.
The data is broadly of two types-consumer and customer data, The consumer data comes from market research, consumer panels, media, and marketing spends and the customer data comes from the multiple touch points that a marketer has with its customers - demo¬graphic data, transactions, inbound- outbound calls and complaints. You study this for long enough and you will find ways to up sales.
For instance, for a leading global retailer, Marketics has built a robust Store Locater Model to accurately help predict the success (in S revenue per sq ft) of every potential store location. All this may sound complicated. But it works.
Doing this offshore makes it more affordable, Apart from Bangalore, Market¬ics has offices in the US and the UK. Its cur¬rent revenues are around $5 million. "India is going to have a big piece of the global KPO cake," says Ramki. And his team to all geared up to capture their slice, for KPO firms if they are to succeed, This includes building knowledge and credibility; delivering quality consistently; getting the proper people; com¬plying with international standards and regulations; getting the sales thrust right; and avoiding conflict of interests. That may seem a tall order. But the prospects of KPO in India, he adds, are "very bright".
Then there are the softer skills that need to be looked at. Nasha Fitter, CEO of the Mumbai-based Fitter Solu¬tions, a company that provides train¬ing for KTO personnel, says that there is a lot to do before we can conquer the world. "Although our graduates are technically very sound, most of them lack English skills, the ability to think strategically and creatively, and overall corporate polish/' she says. "Forcing young graduates to put on an American accent is no longer the challenge, Now we need to teach out graduates to be enterprising and resourceful in tasks such as online searching; to be crisp, clear and gram¬matically correct in conveying oral and written messages; to be able to synthesize vast amounts of data into key insights and not to mi5S the 'forest lor the trees"; and to be able to cultivate the personality and spontaneity required to build relationships in the new, borderless economy,"
Finally, there is backlash to cope with. The reaction to India's BPO suc¬cess was had enough. When knowl¬edge jobs start eloping from the L'S, the dam will really break loose. Many stud¬ies have proved that outsourcing is actually creating jobs in the US. But the workers' unions are not buying that. Evalueserve says that India will need to source around 120,000 international multilingual professionals by 2010. So we will be creating jobs here for those who lose them in the West. But that may not cut much ice either, Perhaps a change will come when the Alicias and the Sarahs grow up. When they clear their maths, they will owe a debt of gratitude to Swati Chopra and the army of Indian tutors who will soon be online. Chopra may well be teaching more than just her assigned subject.
PANGEA3
The legal eagles
Pangea, the supertontinent of the Permian Period, existed more than 225 million years ago, Pangea I, an organisation that -in its own way - seeks to knit together the continents that have drifted apart, is of more recent vin¬tage. "Pangea3 was formed in May 2004 and kicked off ~ operations in Octooer 2004/ says Saniay Kamfani, co-CEO of the Company. "We have over 30 lawyers and engineers in Mumbai and five in Mew York. We have 20 clients. We expect to grow our staff itrengthto 100 by the end of 2005." That's big thinking. "The challenge in the beginning was convincing the first recruits that legal outsourcing was a step up in their legal careers," says CO-CEO David Perla. "But after working with us for some time, the first group was. clearly glad that they had joined."
What exactly does Pangea3 do? Says Perla: “We provide high-value services such as contract drafting and management, litigation and document analysis, legal research, and patent research, analysis and prosecu¬tion-related services." Adds Kamlani: "We are a premier provider of outsourced legal services and deliver sophisticated lega."
Pangea 3 is operating in an arena that is likely 10 get very competitive. There are already established players like ippro, which has been incubated by Nishith Desal Associates. "Vpro provides IP-related ser¬vices including patent drafting, prior art search and intellectual asset manage¬ment," says Vaibhav Parikh of Nishith Desai Associates. "It has more than 10 employee* and a similar number of clients. While It was incorporated about two years ago, it was operationalised less than a year ago."
More are coming up. If you visit the dis¬cussion forum at LegalServkelndia. com, you will find hundreds of lawyers -wanting to set up legal KPQS (or LPOS, as they are more popularly known). "Although many companies play in the area of work we do, most of them spe¬cialise in only one of two areas," says Karn-lani. "Many of them are not organisations of lawyers. A number of them are large EPOS with a small vertical on the fringe of our service offering. Our real competitors are lawyers in the US." Pangea3 arvd its ilk are actually nibbling at the very edges of a huge cake. The American legal services market has around S200 billion in annual revenues. Legal process outsourcing was only around J50 million this year, expected to go up to S300 million by 2010 and Jl billion by 2015.
MANIPAL ACUNOVA
Search for a panacea
Pharmaceutical companies in the West are facing multiple chal¬lenges. On the one hand, because of increasingly stringent regulations, the cost of discovering new drugs is on the rise while the speed is slowing down. At the same time, many Of their patents are expiring. In addition,, as against getting patents for 20 years, drug patents now are for only for 10-15 years. All this is putting pressure on them to speed up the drug discovery process.
India, with its talent pool and — ironi¬cally — its high prevalence of disease (which makes available patients for test¬ing) is, a choice to outsource clinical research and trials in drug discovery, It is to tap this opportunity that Mani¬pal Acunova, a collaboration between the Manipal group and Acunova, was set up earlier this year with a funding of Rs50 crore. Acunova is a team of doctors and scientists, and a few strategic investors.
Says D.A, Prasanna, vice-chairman and managing director of Manipal Acunova: "India at present exports generic drugs worth JS billion and the success of Indian biopharma companies like Ranbaxy, Cipla, Dr Reddy’s and Bio-con has given the confidence to Western countries that India is capable of high-end work in this segment."
According to Prasanna, Manipal Acunova currency has 10 global and five Indian clients for whom it is carrying out projects in drug discovery and clinical testing. The services include pre-clinical studies, bio-availability, bio-equivalence, pharmacokinetics and clinical data management.
"In this area of work, apart from research and. clinical trials, there is tremendous BackOffice support that is required by way of reference labs, imag¬ing and cardiology centres, and clinical data management," says Prasanna, Manipal Acunova presently has a team of 75 people which Prasanna expects to ramp up to 200 in the next 12 months. He is targeting revenues of Rs 25 crore in the next two years.
PAPRfKAAS
Animation to games
When Paprikaas Animation Studio was set up in Bangalore in August 2001 by Nandish Domlur, Srini Raghavan and Virendra Patil, little did they think that they would end up doing work for some of the top studios and production companies in the world, Their target was the domestic mar¬ket. But they soon realized that this mar¬ket was not very encouraging or receptive. Within the next two months they quickly changed their business model, ramped up their team from eight to 40 and equipped themselves for the global market. Today, Paprikaas is a 130-strong team and Domlur hopes to raise it to 250 within the next six months. Paprika as' first break came in early 2002 when it got a contract from the 5eoul-based Digital Dream Studios for 11 half-hour episodes for two television seri¬als. Since then the team has not looked back, just a couple of weeks ago Paprikaas was chosen as one of the Top 100 compa¬nies in Asia by Red Herring. The company h currently readying a fulf-tength ani¬mated Italian feature film, which is sched¬uled for a European release early next year, "Till now the work happening out of India has been primarily in the production stage," says Domlur, the CEO. "The pre-production and the postproduction were not being outsourced to us. But now we are seeing even that moving here."
"The animation out-sourcing market is huge and it is ready," continues Domlur, 'We, in India, can compress budgets by 30-40 per cent. But this cost advantage can work in our favour only if we can offer wortd-class quality and also understand the dynamics of delivering on time. We are part of a huge cycle and dates are committed well in advance. We have to respect the schedule."
EVAL.UESERVE
Value in numbers
IBM and McKinsey are two of the biggest names in the business. So, when some of its alumni get together to start a new ven¬ture, you can expect a crackerjack of a project. Check out Evalueserve (which essentially refers to Evaluation Services) formed by Alok Aggarwal and Marc Vol-lenweider in December 20O0, Aggarwal had founded the IBM India. Research Laboratory in 1997. Vollenweider was partner In-charge of the McKinsey Knowledge Centre in India. Says Aggarwal: "Evalueserve is the largest pure KPO player in the world, and also the largest provider of IP (Intellectual Property) services."
"Evalueserve started its services as the pioneers of KPO in India/ continues Aggarwal "The company had to struggle to differentiate itself from traditional &PO companies. This was also compounded by the fact that the sales and marketing effort for such higher-end research ser¬vices was a very difficult task, as India was still known for its cheap, back-end BPO/CAII Centre services."
There were problems getting people also. Says Aggarwal: "Finding the right talent pool and expertise was (and still is) a big deterrent to the growth of the com¬pany, Training the first batch of employ¬ees in business research and IPR. was a tedious and time-consuming task, and almost took the company one full year before they were client ready."
Today, Evalueserve operates in various "synergistic research and analytics domains". The company provides ser¬vices in six specialized busi¬ness lines: business research; market research; IP research; financial and data analytics; investment research; and emerging markets research- "Our ana¬lysts have successfully completed over 5,000 research projects, in 150 countries and 65 languages to date," says Aggarwal. "Our IP professionals have drafted over 500 patents and completed more than 1,000 patent art searches."
The company had a team of about 850 full-time professionals in May 2005 and this is expected to grow to about 1,000 employees by December. "The company is doubling every year," says Aggarwal. "We expect to continue grow¬ing at this rate for the next few years."
CAREER LAUNCHER
The numbers add up Some 40 per cent of the students in Amer¬ica fail in mathematics. In today's net¬worked world, it may be up to tutors in India, the country that gave the world zero, to help their people not get zeros. "The US market alone is worth $3 billion annually," says Anirudh Phadke, principal consultant (e-1_earning) at Career Launcher India, an online education com¬pany. Companies like Career Launcher and Educomp have entered the Tray. But they feel that they have touched only the tip of the iceberg.
How does it work? At Career Launcher, the teacher and the students work on an electronic whiteboard, which is like a blank sheet of paper on which both can write, They can also speak with each other using voip. The content is provided by the system to help the teacher. The participants also use a digital pen to facilitate writing on the computer. While the teacher knows the name of the stu¬dent, he or she herself is anonymous, That's because it could be arty teacher who's available taking the course; there's no one-to-one relationship. Most Other companies work the same way, TutorVista has been founded by K, Ganesh. "We combine the three critical pillars- offshore faculty, relevant content and scientific pedagogy - to deliver results to global students," he says. According to Ganesh, TutorVista aims to build a Kindergarten-to-PhD relationship with a student and take him through the lifecycle in select subjects. Everyone needs private tuition. "Even Tony Blair's son gets private tuition," he says.
It's not all money for jam, of course. Career Launcher started an outsourcing project for an American tutoring com¬pany about 1 & months back. It has taught some 800 students in this period, which is just a drop in the demand bucket.
"The major challenge was to get the right accent," says Phadke. "We also had to find people who were motivated to teach Maths."
Incidentally, for Indian online Stu¬dents, each session is for two hours. For American children, it's only one. Why? "The standards are much lower there," says an online tutor.
MARKETICS
Turning dust into gold
Even as some KPO companies are cashing in on HR, the Bangalore-based Marketics Technologies seems to believe that tradi¬tional HR is redundant, Co-founder S. Ramakrishnan {Ramki) says that he can trust his people to provide "client delight", That's the only must. His people can come in when they want or work from where they will. "Employees can alto take as much leave as they desire," he says. One problem (or is it a blessing?}: they don't take leave.
Marketics is in the data analytics Space.
In the fray
SOME OF THE COMPANIES IN DIFFERENT KPO SEGMENTS.
Pharma Research & Development
Biocon, Shanta Biotech. Divi’s Labs, Vimta Labs, Ranbaxy. DrReddysLabs, Sun Pharma, Reliance life Sconces. Matrix Labs,Quintile India,Lambda,Lotus Sygene, Metahelix Life Science;, Indegene.
Business & Technical Analysis
McKinsey, Deloitte & Touche. AC Nielson, PWC, E&Y.
Learning, Solutions ACS, Achieve Global,Accenture Learning, Digital Think learning (a Convergys Company}, Exult {acquired by Hewitt), Element K, Career Launcher, General Physics, GeoLearning, IBM Learning, Intellinex*, Intrepid Learning Solutions, KnowtedgePlanet, TutorVIsta.
Animation & Design Toonz Animation, Crest Communrcations, Maya Entertainment, Silvertoon Studio, UTV Toons Zee Institute of Creative Arts, 2NZ Stud'QS, Pentamedia Graphics, Prasad Studios, Acropetal, Jadooworks, Color Chips, Heart Animation, Paprikaas.
Business & Market Research
Scope e-Knowledge Center, Evalueserve, McKinsey Knowledge Centre, WNS, Frost & Sullivan, OfflceTiger, Ugam,PWC, Medical Services, Acusis, Spryance, Stheris. Heartland
Writing & Content Development
Techbooks, Innodata, ThomsonDigital, Lason.
Legal Services & IP Research
Evalueserve, Manthan Services, Intellevate LLC Mindcrest, Ippro, Intercom India, Datamatics Technologies, Atlas Legal Research, Pangea3, Lawwave, lexadigm, Lexwerx, Phillips Research.
Data Analytics
Evalueserve, Inductis, Decision Craft, Fractal, Fair Isaac, Symphony, Accenture, Marketics,
Investment analysis & Equity Research
Evalueserve, Amba, Copal Partners, Adventity, WNS, OfflceTiger Engineering & Design L&T, Thermax, Mariindra, Hero Global Design, Nielsoft, Sierra Atlantic, Infotech Enterprises.
Captives of Global organisations
JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Reuters (Editorial services), Thomson Financial, IMS Health, McGraw Hill - CRISIL (Information services). Frost & Sullivan, Maritz, AC Nielsen, TNS, the WPP group, GE (Market Research & Analytics), Quintiles (clinical research), McKinsey, General Motors, Ford, Bechtel, Texas Instruments, Motorola,
SCOPE E-KNOWLEPCE
Wide scope
It can claim to be the grand daddy of the KPO companies in India, Scope e-Knowl-edge Centre was established in 19B7. "Scope has defined and pioneered the KPO space/' says president and director, Gwittu Nair. This Chennai-based com¬pany has offices in New York, London and Brussels.
In the beginning, of course, Scope operated mainly in India. The rwiJe to a global market was around 2002. "We are essentially converting information to knowledge/ says Nair.
What exactly does Scope do? Very broadly speaking, it provides data¬base and research services. This includes developing global data-bases; indexing and cataloguing; making news sum¬maries and abstracts; preparing in-depth industry reports; and financial data, "We are creating an eKnowl edge organisation that is based on linking knowledge and human resources around the wodd without regard to geographical distances," says the com¬pany. "Each of our services spearheads an activity or area of knowledge. Building intel¬lectual property in each area Is the main focus that will be used to offer clients greater value,"
The company is not pusl targeting the English-speaking world, but Engiish, French and German too. Good going. Or should that read Boa Or Gut. Ask Scope.
TELERADIOLOCY
Radio doctors
1t was a chance remark that led to the genesis of Teleradiology Solutions by the nusband-wife learn of Dr Arjun Kalyanpur and Dr Sunitfl Maheswari. In 1999, the duo returned to work in India after spend¬ing nine years in the US. On one of his trips back in 2001, a for-mer colleague asked Kalyanpur to work with him if he ever decided to return to the US permanently. Kalyanpur's response was a jocular: "I'll work with you, but from India."
What was said in "jest, however, seemed to hold out tremendous potential and promise and, in 2002, Teleradiology Solutions was set up in Bangalore. The Teleradiology services include interpreta¬tion of ail non-invasive imaging Studies, namely CT, MRI, ultrasound, nuclear med¬icine studies and digitised X-rays. For emergency diagnosis, report! are deliv¬ered to the referring hospital in less than 30 minutes. Teleradiology Solutions has 75 people of whom 20 are radiologists. Of these 20, eight Including Kalyanpur have been cer¬tified by the American Board of Radiology in Diagnostic Radiol¬ogy and do work relating to 50 hospi- tais in the US. The rest of the radiologists cater to demand from Asian and Indian hospitals. Teleradiology Solutions is the first Indian company to be certified by the US Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, The CEO is Kfllyanpur, who is also the chief radiologist and assistant clinical pro¬fessor at Vale University School Of Medi¬cine: There is an acute' shortage of radiologists In the US. We have stepped in to fill that void. Wc are extending Our reach into other markets such as the Mid¬dle East, Asia-Pacific and Europe."
