Rural BPO changes life for youth in southern India

Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh: It is a swank air-conditioned office like the several thousands of facilities that dot our metros and even tier II cities. But at this BPO in Tirupati, virtually at the feet of Lord Venkateswara, the swagger and bluster, and of course the supreme confidence, often bordering on arrogance, that you find in a Mumbai, Bangalore or Chennai is virtually absent.

A team leader guides an employee at the rural BPO in Tirupati/ Photo credit: Rasheeda Bhagat

The faces are young, bright, enthusiastic, but take a closer look and you notice the furrowed brows and the deep concentration with which the young women — the morning shift is virtually dominated by women as no woman can work beyond 7 p.m. — are punching in data on their computers.

The sun’s rays have already turned sharp but you notice some of the women wearing sweaters, mufflers and woollen caps. M. Durgaprasad, Assistant Vice President and Head Operations (BPO), smiles at your puzzled look and says, “These people are not used to sitting in air-conditioned rooms and are guarding themselves against cold.”

The Atlas Documentary Facilitators Company is a rural BPO wholly owned by HDFC Bank. Set up in the temple town of Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, it takes care of the bank’s backroom operations such as opening of new accounts, foreclosure of loans and credit card-related activities.

The 550-odd employees at this BPO, which was started in July 2008, are graduates and were selected and given preliminary training by the government-run EGMM (Employment Generation Marketing Mission), which works in tandem with the Department of Rural Development.

A unique characteristic of all the workers at this BPO is their rural background; about 55% are women, they are first-generation graduates, and some the sole graduate from their village.

“Won’t give dowry”

Chandrakala, 21, hails from a village near Anantapur, about 150 km from Tirupati. She gets paid over Rs 5,000 like most of her colleagues, lives with five of them in a room where the rent is Rs 1,500. They sleep on the floor, but have smartly invested Rs 1,500 on an electric rice cooker.

Before leaving for their morning shift, some basic cooking is completed for their lunch. The girls make simple vegetarian food and opt for a breakfast of idli-dosai-coffee costing Rs six and delivered by a canteen operator to the BPO. They all walk the 1.5 km distance to office.

Chandrakala’s father is a small farmer, and in the last five months she has sent home Rs 8,000 — big money for her family. But you soon learn that her parents have not touched this money. Not even for the education of her younger sister, who does not study.

“Our village is very small, it has no college and not many people are interested in education. In fact, I’m the first and only graduate from my village,” she says proudly.

So will her money go towards paying her dowry?

“No, Ma’am. I will not give any dowry when I get married,” she says, and smiles when you suggest that it might then be used for the marriage expenses. But the cheerful news is that the parents of none of these young women are in a hurry to push them into marriage.

Chandrakala and many of her colleagues, some 24 or 25, dismiss the question of marriage and indicate that a steady job and economic empowerment are more precious to them.

Durgaprasad points out that they come with very basic skills and can barely manage to feed in 15 words a minute on the computer.

“But we train them on the job and help improve their English as they have studied in Telugu medium. Most of them are first-generation employees and children of agricultural workers, small farmers, carpenters, dhobis, barbers, etc. The work entrusted to them is non-voice based data processing.”

Chandrakala and her colleagues are involved in processing the image of the document sent to them when new accounts are opened in HDFC Bank.

After the data is fed into the computer, a second pair of eyes checks it to minimise mistakes. “I find them sincere, disciplined and hardworking, and we identify 11 employees every quarter and give them a bonus of Rs 2,000 to motivate them,” he says.

Intense, hardworking

One can see the intensity and concentration on the faces of the young women. Pushpa, 22, is the daughter of a landless agricultural labourer who works on a meagre daily wage of Rs 60-70, and that too when work is available. From her take-home salary of Rs 3,700, Rs 2,500 goes to her parents and helps in running the house.

Mahesh Babu, 23, is the son of a dhobi from Tirupati. His father too makes less money than him — about Rs 100 a day, and his salary is a big help in running the home and repaying whatever was borrowed for his sister’s marriage recently.

A telling social comment

One is not sure if it’s a gender thing, but compared to the men, the women appear happier, brighter and more optimistic about their future. And most of them are certain that they will think of marriage only after getting a firm grounding in their job, even though not all are optimistic that no dowry will change hands.

Abida, 25, who has just joined the BPO, puts it plainly when she says: “Without dowry, there is no marriage. For my sister, they asked for a lakh in cash and some gold too.”

While resigned to dishing out dowry, Abida has told her parents to wait at least for two years; “and, I’ve made it clear that even after marriage I will continue to work.”

That she will get her way is evident from the fact that she has refused to wear the burqa to work. “My parents said at least cover your head with a black scarf, but I said nobody does that in my office, so how can I?”

Vijayalakshmi, an MBA in HR from a Tirupati college, is an experienced recruiter and a team leader with an annual pay package of Rs 1.2 lakh. Her father is a retired employee of the TTD in Tirupati; she is 24, comes to office on a scooter, and wants to wait two years before “thinking of marriage”.

Dowry? “I don’t think so,” she says, adding, “Today, things have changed for women in India.”

Advantage: rural India

Spelling out the advantage of setting up a BPO like this, A. Rajan, Group Head, Operations, HDFC Bank, says ultimately such ventures will survive only if they are “sustainable over long periods; temporary generosity will not help. Or else there are many philanthropists who can set up such rural ventures.”

Some NGOs from Noida, Delhi and Tamil Nadu have shown interest in replicating this model in their States, and Rajan is also in talks with some overseas customers. But the limitation is that for now such rural graduates can only do image-based work.

“Voice is not their skill base. So I can’t give them any customer service activity or medical transcriptions because they can’t understand foreign accent. But the most important thing is getting long-term commitment and support from local governments,” he says.

Every State has budgetary allocation for rural development, which in many States remains unused. “All they have to do is use it; good thoughts about rural uplift are not sufficient; action is required to change the face of rural India.”

At the end of the day, such a job can make a world of difference to rural graduates. Durgaprasad says the money they take home means a lot.

“They give almost all of it to their parents. Consider the background they come from. I enjoy the work and feel happy I’m able to help some people. They motivate themselves to do well; not even a single person has been sent out because of shoddy work.”

Making it sustainable

Can a rural BPO become a sustainable and profitable model?

Rajan says the biggest cost on running a rural BPO far from metros or big cities “is the huge cost I incur in transporting the images through leased bandwidth. In our backyard in Mumbai or Chennai this cost is eliminated because the servers are located there.”

But the distinct advantage is the dedication and commitment levels of the people here. In big cities “boys and girls not only have many distractions, they also have so many opportunities. Next to my office in Mumbai, there are MNCs with their own BPOs and our trained employees are a good poaching ground for them. A little more salary and they are gone,” he says.

This is a huge loss because of the cost of recruitment and training. “The biggest saving in Tirupati is the lack of people turnover, as that saves cost of training and retraining. Coupled with their dedication and sincerity, this will offset the additional cost of the leased line.”

“I’d like to open out its services to other banks and corporates, particularly private insurance companies, and use this model in other States too, but only if I get good ground support from organisations like the Department of Rural Development.”

He is happy about the EGMM support in Tirupati “because we don’t have feet on the street to move to the villages and identify talent. What we can provide is the technology, processing and training support.”