What's real education? - dnaindia.com: "Arun Katiyar
Saturday, January 23, 2010 9:35 IST
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Was it Mark Twain who said “Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education”? Training, you could say, is everything. It can turn you from one vegetable to another, of a slightly higher order. Unless, of course, you decide that it’s knowledge you are going to pursue. Which is the whole point about Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots, starring Aamir Khan, R Madhavan, Sharman Joshi and the delightful Boman Irani.
But the film shows two students committing suicide (one succeeds, the other fails). In both instances, it’s not really the pressure of education, but the rigidity and treachery that lies within one fictional character — the principal. However, parents are afraid to show the movie to their children, what with exams coming up, pressure building up and the way out — suicide — that the movie appears to depict. This is a dodgy truth. If anything, 3 Idiots suggests that all can be well; an IIT education isn’t the be-all and end-all of life; and it’s perfectly okay to find your true calling, whenever it comes, well, calling. The question is: Do we want education or do we want to create productive people?
The correct answer to that question is — we want education because it leads to socially acceptable behaviour, upright morals, the ability to play, read, write and solve polynomial equations of the second degree. And, in the process, be productive. But today, you can’t trust education itself. You can’t trust it to teach you Euclidean geometry, you can’t trust it to help you translate Milton, or understand why Romila Thapar only wrote A History of India and not The History of India, you can’t even trust it to tell you what is wrong with Donald Duck’s name (OK, we’ll tell you: logically, Donald can’t be a duck, and has to be a drake. Get it?).
Education’s primary objective is to help you like the world through knowing and understanding it. All good things flow from this tremendous connect that education can help you make: innovation and poetry, the urge for adventure, the love for photoelectron spectroscopy, exobiology, music and ultimately the need to leave behind an improved world for the next generation.
There has never been a bigger need for education than now. But everything that can go wrong with education is going wrong — and more. The latest is the fact that deemed universities are below the set standards in the education they impart and will be derecognised. Of the 44 institutes the Union HRD ministry has identified for derecognition, six are in Karnataka, ranking the state just below Tamil Nadu which tops the list with 16 institutes. Bottom line, the system is about to produce even fewer students with an ‘education’ putting pressure on industry, government and society itself.
Amidst this we have one man in Bangalore, Sunil Savara, who is moving towards an ideal where six million Indians who could never go to school — ever — become productive within the next 12 years. Whoa! Stand back. Can this be real? Savara, who is the founder of a company that realigns an organisation’s business processes using content and workflow technologies, and is recognised as one of IBMs best partners in this space, says that he wants each of these six million to earn a minimum of $2500 per year. That doesn’t appear to be too much — but if you add the numbers, it could increase the national GDP by $15 billion. You want to sit up and take notice of something like this.
How will he achieve this? He wants to take European or American backoffice work to the villages of India. He plans to teach people in who have never been to school to read and write English and perform simple tasks on the computer. He calls this the Village BPO. It’s not a dramatically new concept — running a BPO from a village that has low infrastructure costs. But what is path breaking is the fact that his focus is on people with zero education.
In the last two years, the Village BPO has created the required processes to reach its objective. It has been working hard in rural Karnataka — parts of Koppal near Hampi — and today has 120 people who never went to school, didn’t know English and who can now speak, read and write English, use computers and are productive. The Village BPO has a long way to go in terms of funding, business acquisition, and even its ability to scale processes to ready (note the absence of the word ‘educate’ in place of ‘ready’) the next 1,20,000. But it is showing the way to productivity at the bottom of the pyramid rather than flawed education at the top."
Saturday, February 6, 2010
HDFC acquires 26% in B'lore rural BPO firm- ITeS-Infotech-The Economic Times
HDFC acquires 26% in B'lore rural BPO firm- ITeS-Infotech-The Economic Times: "DFC acquires 26% in B'lore rural BPO firm
16 Jun 2009, 0345 hrs IST, Boby Kurian & PP Thimmaya, ET Bureau
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BANGALORE: India’s $12-billion BPO industry has now reached Bagepalli, a rural pocket sitting on the margins of the arid Rayalseema belt in
Karnataka’s Chickballapur district. And it’s off to Purnia in Bihar as the rapidly expanding telecom and insurance firms seek native language help desks and data processing in the hinterlands, closer to their markets.
In a possible affirmation of its belief in the rural BPO story, HDFC, the country’s largest home finance company, has picked up 26% stake in Bangalore-based RuralShores Business Services, a rural BPO firm floated by six technocrats last year.
The ‘ruralshoring’ start-up aims to link up about 500 locations, with a population below 20,000 to the fabled BPO script over the next seven years. This rather small transaction for HDFC was driven straight from its top echelons implying its significance.
RuralShores—with a promoter list that include former E&Y honcho V V Ranganathan, Mastek MD Sudhakar Ram, former MD of Xansa India Murali Vullaganti and G Srinivas of Dawn Consulting—confirmed HDFC’s entry as a significant minority investor.
Ruralshoring, a push towards shifting less complex BPO work to inexpensive rural locations, is the new buzzword for the knowledge economy, as these hamlets could possibly evolve into the back-office of corporate India. The BPO firms have been moving hinterland - to the semi-urban centres - but the final push is in the offing with firms like RuralShores taking downstream work to rural pre-graduates who are employed under daily minimum wage regulations.
BPO firms like Xchanging, which acquired Cambridge Solutions, and Hinduja Global Solutions have ventured into semi-urban places like Shimoga in Karnataka and Durgapur in West Bengal.
HDFC Bank through a fully-owned arm kicked-off captive operations at Tirupati last year, while Tata Chemicals came up with back-office centres at Barala in Uttar Pradesh and Mithapur in Gujarat.
“We typically look at setting up 80-100 seater centres in towns with a population of 10,000-15,000 with a cluster of villages around it. The work timings are between 6 am to 10 pm in two shifts with each centre employing 150-200 people,” says Murali Vullaganti, CEO of RuralShores. The firm operates two such centres at Bagepalli and Ratnagiri near Vellore in Tamil Nadu where they operate along with the local schools.
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We wish to develope rural BPO in our home village in M.P. Pl. advise,
| Read
28 Sep 2009, 1219 hrs IST, By D.P.Girdonia. , Bangalore
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1 comments on this story. Read them and post your own.
Other stories in this section
* Genpact eyes 14% revenue growth in ’10
* Wipro seeks 50 acres near Bangalore airport for IT park
* Mahindra Satyam gets contracts in South America
* IT, BPO export revenues likely to rise by 5.5 per cent
* Software, BPO exports to touch $50 bn; may grow 15 pc in FY11
* IBM to acquire Chicago-based Initiate Systems
More >>
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* China ramps up tone in disputes with US
* JPMorgan's chief reaps $16-million bonus
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BofA-Merrill names new India wealth management head: Memo
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch has appointed Pradeep Dokania to the new position of India head of global wealth and investment management, according to an internal memo.
ET Debates
* Should dividends be taxed in investors' hands?"
16 Jun 2009, 0345 hrs IST, Boby Kurian & PP Thimmaya, ET Bureau
Save Print EMail Share Comment Text:
BANGALORE: India’s $12-billion BPO industry has now reached Bagepalli, a rural pocket sitting on the margins of the arid Rayalseema belt in
Karnataka’s Chickballapur district. And it’s off to Purnia in Bihar as the rapidly expanding telecom and insurance firms seek native language help desks and data processing in the hinterlands, closer to their markets.
In a possible affirmation of its belief in the rural BPO story, HDFC, the country’s largest home finance company, has picked up 26% stake in Bangalore-based RuralShores Business Services, a rural BPO firm floated by six technocrats last year.
The ‘ruralshoring’ start-up aims to link up about 500 locations, with a population below 20,000 to the fabled BPO script over the next seven years. This rather small transaction for HDFC was driven straight from its top echelons implying its significance.
RuralShores—with a promoter list that include former E&Y honcho V V Ranganathan, Mastek MD Sudhakar Ram, former MD of Xansa India Murali Vullaganti and G Srinivas of Dawn Consulting—confirmed HDFC’s entry as a significant minority investor.
Ruralshoring, a push towards shifting less complex BPO work to inexpensive rural locations, is the new buzzword for the knowledge economy, as these hamlets could possibly evolve into the back-office of corporate India. The BPO firms have been moving hinterland - to the semi-urban centres - but the final push is in the offing with firms like RuralShores taking downstream work to rural pre-graduates who are employed under daily minimum wage regulations.
BPO firms like Xchanging, which acquired Cambridge Solutions, and Hinduja Global Solutions have ventured into semi-urban places like Shimoga in Karnataka and Durgapur in West Bengal.
HDFC Bank through a fully-owned arm kicked-off captive operations at Tirupati last year, while Tata Chemicals came up with back-office centres at Barala in Uttar Pradesh and Mithapur in Gujarat.
“We typically look at setting up 80-100 seater centres in towns with a population of 10,000-15,000 with a cluster of villages around it. The work timings are between 6 am to 10 pm in two shifts with each centre employing 150-200 people,” says Murali Vullaganti, CEO of RuralShores. The firm operates two such centres at Bagepalli and Ratnagiri near Vellore in Tamil Nadu where they operate along with the local schools.
Share
Read business stories in हिंदी | ગુજરાતી
Save Print EMail Share Comment Text:
Comments to the Editor
We wish to develope rural BPO in our home village in M.P. Pl. advise,
| Read
28 Sep 2009, 1219 hrs IST, By D.P.Girdonia. , Bangalore
View all comments >>
1 comments on this story. Read them and post your own.
Other stories in this section
* Genpact eyes 14% revenue growth in ’10
* Wipro seeks 50 acres near Bangalore airport for IT park
* Mahindra Satyam gets contracts in South America
* IT, BPO export revenues likely to rise by 5.5 per cent
* Software, BPO exports to touch $50 bn; may grow 15 pc in FY11
* IBM to acquire Chicago-based Initiate Systems
More >>
Other News
* Another redesign for Facebook on sixth birthday
* Apologetic Toyota looking to outside quality input
* China ramps up tone in disputes with US
* JPMorgan's chief reaps $16-million bonus
Market
NSE|BSE
Graph
Corporate Announcement
BofA-Merrill names new India wealth management head: Memo
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch has appointed Pradeep Dokania to the new position of India head of global wealth and investment management, according to an internal memo.
ET Debates
* Should dividends be taxed in investors' hands?"
Friday, February 5, 2010
CXOtoday.com > News > Technology > Cisco Opens RuralShores BPO Center in Karnataka
CXOtoday.com > News > Technology > Cisco Opens RuralShores BPO Center in Karnataka: "#
Cisco Opens RuralShores BPO Center in Karnataka
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# By CXOtoday Staff, Jan 25, 2010 1857 hrs IST
# Tags : Cisco, RuralShores BPO Center, Karnataka, Shimoga
#
Cisco Systems and RuralShores Business Services initiated second rural BPO center was recently inaugurated in Karnataka.
The new center, located at Thirthahalli, Shimoga District is powered by Cisco technology and will provide employment to nearly 200 rural youth from the town and surrounding villages.
The first center at Bagepalli (Chikkaballapur District, Karnataka) has nearly 150 youth enagaged in process work for leading companies based in the country.
RuralShores has worked with Cisco to define the technology architecture for the initiative, in line with the company s governance model, which consists of four layers -- rural BPO/delivery center, regional centers, hub centers and the data center.
Murali Vullaganti, CEO of RuralShores, said, 'RuralShores, which as founded by eminent leaders from corporate India and supported by leading financial institutions in the country, will fortify the hands of government with the twin objectives of fostering rural economy through skill development and employment and to bring efficiency and economics to all clients migrating for work to rural India.'
'We would like to congratulate RuralShores Business Services on the inauguration of their second rural BPO center in Karnataka. This is a significant initiative and Cisco is proud to be associated with it,' said Toby Burton, vice president, Cisco Globalisation Centre, East.
'The ability to help private and governmental organisations around the country, to take advantage of the network to promote rural development and employment, is a tremendous opportunity. We're pleased that the RuralShores and the Government of Karnataka share this vision and is committed to implementing these programs,' he added.
RuralShores plans to set up 30 more such centers in the rural areas of each district of Karnataka over next three years providing training and direct employment to nearly 6,000 such youth."
Cisco Opens RuralShores BPO Center in Karnataka
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# By CXOtoday Staff, Jan 25, 2010 1857 hrs IST
# Tags : Cisco, RuralShores BPO Center, Karnataka, Shimoga
#
Cisco Systems and RuralShores Business Services initiated second rural BPO center was recently inaugurated in Karnataka.
The new center, located at Thirthahalli, Shimoga District is powered by Cisco technology and will provide employment to nearly 200 rural youth from the town and surrounding villages.
The first center at Bagepalli (Chikkaballapur District, Karnataka) has nearly 150 youth enagaged in process work for leading companies based in the country.
RuralShores has worked with Cisco to define the technology architecture for the initiative, in line with the company s governance model, which consists of four layers -- rural BPO/delivery center, regional centers, hub centers and the data center.
Murali Vullaganti, CEO of RuralShores, said, 'RuralShores, which as founded by eminent leaders from corporate India and supported by leading financial institutions in the country, will fortify the hands of government with the twin objectives of fostering rural economy through skill development and employment and to bring efficiency and economics to all clients migrating for work to rural India.'
'We would like to congratulate RuralShores Business Services on the inauguration of their second rural BPO center in Karnataka. This is a significant initiative and Cisco is proud to be associated with it,' said Toby Burton, vice president, Cisco Globalisation Centre, East.
'The ability to help private and governmental organisations around the country, to take advantage of the network to promote rural development and employment, is a tremendous opportunity. We're pleased that the RuralShores and the Government of Karnataka share this vision and is committed to implementing these programs,' he added.
RuralShores plans to set up 30 more such centers in the rural areas of each district of Karnataka over next three years providing training and direct employment to nearly 6,000 such youth."
Rural BPO centres provide a ray of hope for smaller towns - Economy and Politics - livemint.com
Rural BPO centres provide a ray of hope for smaller towns - Economy and Politics - livemint.com: "Rural BPO centres provide a ray of hope for smaller towns
These new centres are offering jobs to young people who would have been forced otherwise to migrate to big cities
Vidhya Sivaramakrishnan
Chennai: For H.N. Punyavathi, a 30-year-old resident of Bagepalli, a small town around 100km from Bangalore, securing a project associate’s job at a rural business process outsourcing, or BPO, firm around four months back was a turning point in her life. The college dropout had to face tough times recently when her husband lost his job and the couple was expecting a child.
“I am very satisfied and happy now,” she says, speaking about her Rs4,000 per month job at RuralShores Business Services Pvt. Ltd, which she joined in March. “People at Bagepalli are very lucky—we have a BPO centre in our town.” Her husband, too, is earning again—he has started a coconut wholesale business, and the couple can dare to dream once more.
Rooted in reality: Workers at the HDFC Bank’s BPO centre in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Employees are involved in processing non-core activities, such as details of customers who have opened bank accounts.
Rooted in reality: Workers at the HDFC Bank’s BPO centre in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Employees are involved in processing non-core activities, such as details of customers who have opened bank accounts.
At a time when BPO units in urban centres have put on hold hiring plans, rural BPO centres seem to be sprouting at various locations, offering jobs to young people from tier II and tier III towns who would otherwise have been forced to migrate to the bigger cities for employment.
RuralShores is one company which has set up its first centre in Bagepalli with 45 project associates. The Bangalore-based company, which has HDFC Bank Ltd as a strategic investor, is now in the process of getting two more centres operational in Tamil Nadu and Bihar.
Murali Vullaganti, chief executive officer, RuralShores, says: “(We have started losing) the advantages of the offshore BPO model that were there 15 years ago in terms of cost, quality, scale and speed (and) control to other countries like China. For the industry to find the next edge, the only way to do (it) is (to) take it to the rural areas.”
The company plans to set up 100 centres in the next three years in various parts of the country, with the tally going up to 500 in seven years. “There is no point in setting up one centre here and the other centre there, the idea is that there should be a huge impact in the rural areas,” says Vullaganti. Each centre will have around 100 seats and can run two shifts; this would increase the employee strength to 200.
For positions such as those of team leaders, the company depends on employees who have studied in the metros but who have rural roots. Since these employees have a rural base, they are agreeable to a rural posting, according to Sreenath N.R., head of human resources at RuralShores.
N. Karthik is one of those who has returned home to take up a job at a rural centre. Karthik was working with an insurance company in Bangalore and found the work pressure there too great.
So when he heard about RuralShores setting up a centre in his hometown, he joined as a project associate. “There were a lot of family problems at home and this job gave me an opportunity to stay back and work,” he says.
Raju Bhatnagar, vice-president, BPO and government relations, National Association of Software and Services Companies, or Nasscom, puts the average salary levels at these rural centres at Rs6,500-7,000 a month.
Moving up the career ladder is not an impossibility for young project associates. According to Sreenath, project associates can become team leaders in two-six years, depending on performance.
Other companies such as Adventity BPO India Pvt. Ltd, Tata Business Support Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd, and HDFC Bank have set up rural BPO centres too and are looking at similar ventures in more locations.
For example, Tata Business Support Services has set up a BPO centre in Mithapur in Gujarat, near the manufacturing unit of Tata Chemicals Ltd, while HDFC Bank has set up a BPO centre in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh to handle some of the lender’s processing activities. It currently employs around 600 and has a capacity to employ 1,800.
Most of the employees at these rural BPOs have studied till class XII, the minimum educational qualification these centres seek, with a few of them being college dropouts. The rural BPOs train them in English-speaking skills, soft skills and processes for six-eight weeks, following which they are ready to take up assignments.
“More than 50% of the employees at the rural centre are women. Working at the centre helps the employees save money for their marriage, pay off debts, buy sewing machines and cows and buffaloes for their families. We do not spend money on retraining, which is the biggest advantage,” says A. Rajan, country head, operations, HDFC Bank. Due to the commitment of employees, Rajan expects the centre to break even in “six months to a year”.
HDFC Bank has tied up with the employment generation and marketing mission of the department of rural development in Andhra Pradesh to identify young people who could be trained and employed by the Tirupati centre. The employees there engage in processing the non-core activities of the bank, such as data-capturing details of customers who have opened accounts with the bank.
RuralShores runs its own centre in Bagepalli and plans to do so in Vellore in Tamil Nadu too. However, it plans to tie up with local entrepreneurs for its other centres, so that each centre would be a “separate legal entity”. The company is in talks with a “major steel manufacturing plant” to set up BPO centres near all the manufacturing facilities of the company. Vullaganti refused to divulge the identity of the company as talks are in the initial stage.
While RuralShores would provide the technology and training inputs for the centre, the local partner would provide the physical infrastructure.
These rural centres face quite a few challenges. Among the bigger challenges Rajan has faced are “getting (broadband) connectivity in place” and “supply of electricity”, besides moving engineers from the city to service the hardware components installed.
Commenting on the business model of a rural BPO centre, Bhatnagar says: “It has to be a hard-core business proposition. The approach and rigour should be no different than for a revenue-generating model.”"
These new centres are offering jobs to young people who would have been forced otherwise to migrate to big cities
Vidhya Sivaramakrishnan
Chennai: For H.N. Punyavathi, a 30-year-old resident of Bagepalli, a small town around 100km from Bangalore, securing a project associate’s job at a rural business process outsourcing, or BPO, firm around four months back was a turning point in her life. The college dropout had to face tough times recently when her husband lost his job and the couple was expecting a child.
“I am very satisfied and happy now,” she says, speaking about her Rs4,000 per month job at RuralShores Business Services Pvt. Ltd, which she joined in March. “People at Bagepalli are very lucky—we have a BPO centre in our town.” Her husband, too, is earning again—he has started a coconut wholesale business, and the couple can dare to dream once more.
Rooted in reality: Workers at the HDFC Bank’s BPO centre in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Employees are involved in processing non-core activities, such as details of customers who have opened bank accounts.
Rooted in reality: Workers at the HDFC Bank’s BPO centre in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Employees are involved in processing non-core activities, such as details of customers who have opened bank accounts.
At a time when BPO units in urban centres have put on hold hiring plans, rural BPO centres seem to be sprouting at various locations, offering jobs to young people from tier II and tier III towns who would otherwise have been forced to migrate to the bigger cities for employment.
RuralShores is one company which has set up its first centre in Bagepalli with 45 project associates. The Bangalore-based company, which has HDFC Bank Ltd as a strategic investor, is now in the process of getting two more centres operational in Tamil Nadu and Bihar.
Murali Vullaganti, chief executive officer, RuralShores, says: “(We have started losing) the advantages of the offshore BPO model that were there 15 years ago in terms of cost, quality, scale and speed (and) control to other countries like China. For the industry to find the next edge, the only way to do (it) is (to) take it to the rural areas.”
The company plans to set up 100 centres in the next three years in various parts of the country, with the tally going up to 500 in seven years. “There is no point in setting up one centre here and the other centre there, the idea is that there should be a huge impact in the rural areas,” says Vullaganti. Each centre will have around 100 seats and can run two shifts; this would increase the employee strength to 200.
For positions such as those of team leaders, the company depends on employees who have studied in the metros but who have rural roots. Since these employees have a rural base, they are agreeable to a rural posting, according to Sreenath N.R., head of human resources at RuralShores.
N. Karthik is one of those who has returned home to take up a job at a rural centre. Karthik was working with an insurance company in Bangalore and found the work pressure there too great.
So when he heard about RuralShores setting up a centre in his hometown, he joined as a project associate. “There were a lot of family problems at home and this job gave me an opportunity to stay back and work,” he says.
Raju Bhatnagar, vice-president, BPO and government relations, National Association of Software and Services Companies, or Nasscom, puts the average salary levels at these rural centres at Rs6,500-7,000 a month.
Moving up the career ladder is not an impossibility for young project associates. According to Sreenath, project associates can become team leaders in two-six years, depending on performance.
Other companies such as Adventity BPO India Pvt. Ltd, Tata Business Support Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd, and HDFC Bank have set up rural BPO centres too and are looking at similar ventures in more locations.
For example, Tata Business Support Services has set up a BPO centre in Mithapur in Gujarat, near the manufacturing unit of Tata Chemicals Ltd, while HDFC Bank has set up a BPO centre in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh to handle some of the lender’s processing activities. It currently employs around 600 and has a capacity to employ 1,800.
Most of the employees at these rural BPOs have studied till class XII, the minimum educational qualification these centres seek, with a few of them being college dropouts. The rural BPOs train them in English-speaking skills, soft skills and processes for six-eight weeks, following which they are ready to take up assignments.
“More than 50% of the employees at the rural centre are women. Working at the centre helps the employees save money for their marriage, pay off debts, buy sewing machines and cows and buffaloes for their families. We do not spend money on retraining, which is the biggest advantage,” says A. Rajan, country head, operations, HDFC Bank. Due to the commitment of employees, Rajan expects the centre to break even in “six months to a year”.
HDFC Bank has tied up with the employment generation and marketing mission of the department of rural development in Andhra Pradesh to identify young people who could be trained and employed by the Tirupati centre. The employees there engage in processing the non-core activities of the bank, such as data-capturing details of customers who have opened accounts with the bank.
RuralShores runs its own centre in Bagepalli and plans to do so in Vellore in Tamil Nadu too. However, it plans to tie up with local entrepreneurs for its other centres, so that each centre would be a “separate legal entity”. The company is in talks with a “major steel manufacturing plant” to set up BPO centres near all the manufacturing facilities of the company. Vullaganti refused to divulge the identity of the company as talks are in the initial stage.
While RuralShores would provide the technology and training inputs for the centre, the local partner would provide the physical infrastructure.
These rural centres face quite a few challenges. Among the bigger challenges Rajan has faced are “getting (broadband) connectivity in place” and “supply of electricity”, besides moving engineers from the city to service the hardware components installed.
Commenting on the business model of a rural BPO centre, Bhatnagar says: “It has to be a hard-core business proposition. The approach and rigour should be no different than for a revenue-generating model.”"
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Move to set up BPOs in all districts | Deccan Chronicle
Move to set up BPOs in all districts | Deccan Chronicle: "Move to set up BPOs in all districts
Decrease text sizeIncrease text size
January 21st, 2010
By Our Correspondent
Tags: BPOs, job opportunities, rural areas
Jan. 20: The government is providing incentives to BPOs to set up shop in rural areas to create job opportunities for the youth in these parts of the state. It hopes that about 100 of them will be established in the districts over the next couple of years.
Each BPO will receive financial aid of Rs 40 lakh from the government, according to IT minister Katta Subramanya Naidu. To begin with around 20 BPOs will be set up during the current fiscal year.
Speaking to reporters in Belgaum on Wednesday, Mr Naidu maintained that the establishment of BPOs in the districts would not only help stop the migration of educated youth from villages to the cities, but also promote the IT sector outside Bengaluru.
While four BPOs would come up in Srirangapatna, Palegam, Gundlupet and Shiggaon, 16 others would be set up in due course in other centres, he added, assuring that by the next financial year all 100 BPOs would be established in rural Karnataka. The minister inaugurated one BPO in Gokak, which has been set up under its new scheme to promote them in the districts.
The government has set aside about Rs 8 crore for the current year to finance the new BPOs, according to the minister who explained that more funds would be provided to BPOs opting for towns with less than 1 lakh population.
He said the state had in all 2085 IT and BT related industries, which did business of Rs 75,000 crore in exports during the current financial year."
Decrease text sizeIncrease text size
January 21st, 2010
By Our Correspondent
Tags: BPOs, job opportunities, rural areas
Jan. 20: The government is providing incentives to BPOs to set up shop in rural areas to create job opportunities for the youth in these parts of the state. It hopes that about 100 of them will be established in the districts over the next couple of years.
Each BPO will receive financial aid of Rs 40 lakh from the government, according to IT minister Katta Subramanya Naidu. To begin with around 20 BPOs will be set up during the current fiscal year.
Speaking to reporters in Belgaum on Wednesday, Mr Naidu maintained that the establishment of BPOs in the districts would not only help stop the migration of educated youth from villages to the cities, but also promote the IT sector outside Bengaluru.
While four BPOs would come up in Srirangapatna, Palegam, Gundlupet and Shiggaon, 16 others would be set up in due course in other centres, he added, assuring that by the next financial year all 100 BPOs would be established in rural Karnataka. The minister inaugurated one BPO in Gokak, which has been set up under its new scheme to promote them in the districts.
The government has set aside about Rs 8 crore for the current year to finance the new BPOs, according to the minister who explained that more funds would be provided to BPOs opting for towns with less than 1 lakh population.
He said the state had in all 2085 IT and BT related industries, which did business of Rs 75,000 crore in exports during the current financial year."
Bribe buster in making | mydigitalfc.com
Bribe buster in making | mydigitalfc.com: "Bribe buster in making
By Reji John Nov 12 2009 , Mumbai
Tags: Bribe, Corruption, Entrepreneur, Ghost Busters, Entrepreneurship
What do you do when you are demanded to pay an amount in bribe
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Foreign entrepreneurs increasingly find a home in Britain
to get a legitimate service done from government agencies? Most often, you pay the bribe and get the work done.
But Shaffi Mather, social entrepreneur and lawyer, it seems has been inspired by the 1984 science fiction comedy Ghost Busters, which was about three eccentric New York city parapsychologists who established their own paranormal exterminator service called Ghostbusters. The difference here, is that Mather is not in the business of busting demonic spirits, but in the business of busting corruption and bribery in India.
He is firming up the foundation to set up an “anti-corruption, for-profit, fee-based, BPO model enterprise” to address a target market equivalent to India’s gross domestic product (GDP). That’s a whopping one trillion plus US dollars! Even the World Bank Institute, leading the work on governance and anti-corruption, calls corruption “a large industry” and confirms the cost of corruption globally to the above figure per annum.
Are you over ambitious? “Not really. I know it is an unheard idea. But my experiences of fighting corruption so far give me the confidence in the viability of this project. We have done 42 pilot cases and managed to defeat the guilty. The cost of fighting back was far less than the amount of the bribe officials demanded,” Mather told Financial Chronicle. “The purpose is to improve transparency in big businesses and in government,” he added.
According to him, it is a “pest-control like service”. “Call it the bribe buster service! Dial in or log in, pay a fee and fight demands for bribes,” said Mather, who is spreading the word around about his new idea and inviting partners for the venture.
He is among 500 prominent leaders attending the second World Justice Forum in Vienna, Austria. He is getting tremendous support from people including technocrats offering IT services to gaming and social media experts to disgrace and honour officials caught in bribery and those refuse to take bribes. Something like a ‘hall of shame’ and ‘hall of fame’ list.
“This is not charity and not-for profit enterprise. I believe in the sustainability of profitable enterprises that can benefit all humanity,” said Mather, whose resume flaunts degrees from the best universities and B-schools. He has also had his share of corporate jobs with Reliance Industries and Essel Group.
While sceptics would call it an unrealistic and dangerous dream to chase, Mather, an advocate for transparency in contracts, has in the past managed to lock horns with big and small cases of corruption involving various government agencies and some of the biggest corporate organisations.
One of the biggest cases Mather is fighting is the ambulance contract awarded by various state governments without an open tender to Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), the organisation floated by the now infamous Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam. In fact, a few years back, Mather also founded a 911-like emergency medical response service called Ambulance Access for All, in Mumbai, and later in a few districts in Kerala."
By Reji John Nov 12 2009 , Mumbai
Tags: Bribe, Corruption, Entrepreneur, Ghost Busters, Entrepreneurship
What do you do when you are demanded to pay an amount in bribe
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Foreign entrepreneurs increasingly find a home in Britain
to get a legitimate service done from government agencies? Most often, you pay the bribe and get the work done.
But Shaffi Mather, social entrepreneur and lawyer, it seems has been inspired by the 1984 science fiction comedy Ghost Busters, which was about three eccentric New York city parapsychologists who established their own paranormal exterminator service called Ghostbusters. The difference here, is that Mather is not in the business of busting demonic spirits, but in the business of busting corruption and bribery in India.
He is firming up the foundation to set up an “anti-corruption, for-profit, fee-based, BPO model enterprise” to address a target market equivalent to India’s gross domestic product (GDP). That’s a whopping one trillion plus US dollars! Even the World Bank Institute, leading the work on governance and anti-corruption, calls corruption “a large industry” and confirms the cost of corruption globally to the above figure per annum.
Are you over ambitious? “Not really. I know it is an unheard idea. But my experiences of fighting corruption so far give me the confidence in the viability of this project. We have done 42 pilot cases and managed to defeat the guilty. The cost of fighting back was far less than the amount of the bribe officials demanded,” Mather told Financial Chronicle. “The purpose is to improve transparency in big businesses and in government,” he added.
According to him, it is a “pest-control like service”. “Call it the bribe buster service! Dial in or log in, pay a fee and fight demands for bribes,” said Mather, who is spreading the word around about his new idea and inviting partners for the venture.
He is among 500 prominent leaders attending the second World Justice Forum in Vienna, Austria. He is getting tremendous support from people including technocrats offering IT services to gaming and social media experts to disgrace and honour officials caught in bribery and those refuse to take bribes. Something like a ‘hall of shame’ and ‘hall of fame’ list.
“This is not charity and not-for profit enterprise. I believe in the sustainability of profitable enterprises that can benefit all humanity,” said Mather, whose resume flaunts degrees from the best universities and B-schools. He has also had his share of corporate jobs with Reliance Industries and Essel Group.
While sceptics would call it an unrealistic and dangerous dream to chase, Mather, an advocate for transparency in contracts, has in the past managed to lock horns with big and small cases of corruption involving various government agencies and some of the biggest corporate organisations.
One of the biggest cases Mather is fighting is the ambulance contract awarded by various state governments without an open tender to Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), the organisation floated by the now infamous Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam. In fact, a few years back, Mather also founded a 911-like emergency medical response service called Ambulance Access for All, in Mumbai, and later in a few districts in Kerala."
BPO gives rural students chance to earn and learn | mydigitalfc.com
BPO gives rural students chance to earn and learn | mydigitalfc.com: "BPO gives rural students chance to earn and learn
By Sangeetha G May 23 2008 , Chennai
Tags: BPO, India, rural students
BPO gives rural students chance to earn and learn
Nehru Memorial college students at work at the HOV Services’ BPO office
Aimed at bridging the gap between industry and academia, Chennai-based BPO, HOV Services has
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introduced an ‘earn-while-you-learn’ opportunity for students of rural colleges.
The programme introduced at Nehru Memorial College and Andavar College, in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirappalli district, has provided over 800 students a chance to work for the company. The project started last year, intends to make students industry-ready, said Suresh Yannamani, president of HOV Services.
The students work three to four hours a day and get themselves acquainted with the industry, he said. At present the work is mainly in healthcare, insurance and banking.
The students are provided with a stipend that help them meet their immediate expenses. HOV Services hopes to introduce the project in seven more colleges in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Andhra Pradesh.
P Balasubramaniam, president of Nehru Memorial college committee, said the programme has given the students a “good exposure” of the industry. “Mostly, IT-ITES related developments happen in major cities only. The programme has given a great opportunity for students of this college at Puttanampatti, some 40 km from Tiruchirappalli, to acquaint with the industry”, he said. Apart from the students, a good number of alumni are also working at the HOV Services facility on full-time basis. Besides the money element, such a job also imbibes qualities like punctuality and commitment towards work among students, he said.
NASSCOM’s Regional Director, K Purushothaman said, “This is a right step in the direction towards making India the IT destination and reaching the 10 million mark by 2010.” According to NASSCOM, India is expected to generate 10 million jobs in the IT-ITES sector by 2010."
By Sangeetha G May 23 2008 , Chennai
Tags: BPO, India, rural students
BPO gives rural students chance to earn and learn
Nehru Memorial college students at work at the HOV Services’ BPO office
Aimed at bridging the gap between industry and academia, Chennai-based BPO, HOV Services has
RELATED ARTICLES
*
Genpact acquires US-based firm
*
Siemens to invest Rs 1,600 cr in India in 3 yrs
*
Indian investors take 24% chunk of property sales
*
Rupee gains 14 paise against dollar in early trade
*
December exports up 9.3 per cent: Govt
introduced an ‘earn-while-you-learn’ opportunity for students of rural colleges.
The programme introduced at Nehru Memorial College and Andavar College, in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirappalli district, has provided over 800 students a chance to work for the company. The project started last year, intends to make students industry-ready, said Suresh Yannamani, president of HOV Services.
The students work three to four hours a day and get themselves acquainted with the industry, he said. At present the work is mainly in healthcare, insurance and banking.
The students are provided with a stipend that help them meet their immediate expenses. HOV Services hopes to introduce the project in seven more colleges in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Andhra Pradesh.
P Balasubramaniam, president of Nehru Memorial college committee, said the programme has given the students a “good exposure” of the industry. “Mostly, IT-ITES related developments happen in major cities only. The programme has given a great opportunity for students of this college at Puttanampatti, some 40 km from Tiruchirappalli, to acquaint with the industry”, he said. Apart from the students, a good number of alumni are also working at the HOV Services facility on full-time basis. Besides the money element, such a job also imbibes qualities like punctuality and commitment towards work among students, he said.
NASSCOM’s Regional Director, K Purushothaman said, “This is a right step in the direction towards making India the IT destination and reaching the 10 million mark by 2010.” According to NASSCOM, India is expected to generate 10 million jobs in the IT-ITES sector by 2010."
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