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Indian BPO firm in Fortune list
Monday, 08 December 2003, 20:30 IST
NEW DELHI: An Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) firm has been identified by Fortune business magazine as one of the six most impressive start-ups globally.
Bangalore-based midsize 24/7 Customer has managed to bag contracts from blue-chip customers despite competition from marquee Indian technology companies, said Fortune in a report, "Tech@Work: Start-ups Are Back", posted on its website Monday.
Shanmugam Nagarajan and P.V. Kannan, who had started and sold a customer-relationship-management software company for $140 million in the 1990s, founded 24/7 in 2000.
"Unlike its Indian rivals, which specialise in software, 24/7 has staked out the much more prosaic field of customer service and tech support. It routes customer calls via the Internet to India and answers them there," said Fortune.
"Managing phone banks generally drives chief information officers nuts. Operators' computers frequently go down, and they are typically not savvy enough to fix glitches themselves," it said.
"Supporting such operations eats up oodles of IT staff time. 24/7 eliminates this headache, and its software also enables customers to monitor how their contract reps in India are doing."
The magazine said America's race to outsource jobs to low cost destinations has made 24/7 thrive.
Sales of the company are running at about $30 million a year, with profits before tax approaching $5 million.
24/7 believes it can offer better quality service than exists in the US, where customer service jobs rank just above burger flipping in terms of pay and status, Kannan told Fortune.
"In India, they are considered solid, middle-class jobs that attract college graduates," he said.
Fortune said despite competition from established Indian players like Wipro, Infosys, and Tata Consultancy Services, 24/7 had assembled an impressive list of customers, including two of the top five credit card banks.
Other start-ups listed in the Fortune list include Palo Alto-based VMware, San Jose firm Airespace, Lisbon's Out Systems, Austin-based Zilliant, and PSS Systems in Palo Alto.
On the global start-up scenario, Fortune said the atmosphere had changed, with venture capitalists eyeing investment opportunities.
"Start-ups once again are eagerly eyeing the corporate tech budget as enterprise IT purchasing has begun to turn back up," it said. "Yet this is no mindless return to the tech boom."
Source: IANS
Source: IANS