India wired

This book, The Backroom Brigade, written by Delhi-based journalist Seetha, is an interesting description of the genesis and transformation of the Indian IT-enabled services (ITES) sector from the mid-1990s till date. It starts well, by highlighting how captive units of American Express, British Airways and General Electric led to a much broader phenomenon of outsourcing, a business that attracted several other multinationals as also India's own Wipro and Infosys.

The first few chapters focus on the problems some of these companies faced in starting their backoffice operations in India. Some executives from Amex (one of the very first companies to set up its Asia-Australia service centre in India), for instance, were shocked to see workers at construction sites working without safety helmets, and worse, their toddlers playing around in the dust nearby without any clothes. On being supplied with helmets, clothes and toys, however, the workers were back to life as usual the very next day, having sold it all.

The first few chapters also have anecdotes on these companies getting frustrated with India's poor infrastructure, red tape, absence of clear-cut policies and utter lack of understanding displayed by government officials on matters such as their need for larger bandwidth (no, Amex had to explain, it needed better link-ups for work far more mundane than espionage).

What gives the book its initial dose of passion are the anecdotes"" especially from Raman Roy, who helped set up operations for Amex, GECIS (now Genpact) and Spectramind (now Wipro BPO), and is often referred to as the patron saint of the Indian BPO sector. Did you, for example, know that Roy had to take 37 clearances in trying to set up Wipro BPO's Pune operations?

Yet, stories such as these did not deter others from getting into the BPO business, so attractive was the opportunity. With terms such as "ITES", "remote services" and "BPO" entering dinner table conversation across the country, and with the industry growing explosively from a mere $600 million in 1999-2000 to $5.2 billion in 2004-05, even "opportunity" was an understatement. Rapid wiring up was essential to the effort if India was to realise the economic potential; the sheer quantity of data transmission between India and the West was set to reach tidal-wave proportions, even as efforts to have all computers networked reached a frenzy. The post-2000 rush saw AOL, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Dell, Citibank and several other firms outsourcing work to business process units India.

The book also captures the transition that the medical transcription industry underwent. This it does through the story of Gurjot Singh Khalsa, an American convert who realised the potential of Indian talent and started HealthScribe India while on a pilgrimage to the country.

Subsequent pages talk about industry consolidation, issues of training and much else. Later chapters address the dotcom wave. The author also includes stories of the thrill experienced by Daksh, Spectramind and EXL as they clinched their first international clients, the grumbling of BPO CEOs about being referred to as "call centres" instead of BPO or ITES units, and the expansion of such value-added services as knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).

However, the focus of the book gets diffused when the author starts dealing with pointless subjects. The book could have done without devoting space to the renaming of companies for better focus, separation of ITES and BPO operations from IT operations, decisions to retain identities as providers of integrated solutions, and other such specifics. Details on manufacturers such as Hero Honda getting into the BPO industry, their joint ventures and so on just give the impression of a report aiming for comprehensive coverage.

However, interest levels pick up again towards the end of the book. The second-last chapter, "The Nightbirds", makes for good reading. It features people with varied backgrounds, ages and personalities getting into BPO jobs, and their experiences with such things as the fabled nightshift. From a human interest perspective, the most readable experiences are of those who lack fluency in English, technical qualifications or both.

To conclude, this book could act as a stand-in resource handbook on the BPO sector, but its readability would have been enhanced had it not tried to do an A-to-Z job. The human interest stories alone could have made a good book. She does touch upon several of these, but interrupts the flow with too many facts and figures.

THE BACKROOM BRIGADE
HOW A FEW INTREPID ENTREPRENEURS BROUGHT THE WORLD TO INDIA

Seetha
Penguin
Price: Rs 375; Pages: xii + 212