Bharti call centres may go to Wipro

Also in talks with IBM for handling a part of its call centre requirements.

Telecom major Bharti Tele-Ventures is in talks with third-party business process outsourcing (BPO) company Wipro Spectramind for outsourcing its call centre operations.

The company is also in talks with IBM, which recently acquired BPO company Daksh, for handling a part of its call centre requirements.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director, Bharti group, said negotiations with BPO companies, including Wipro Spectramind, were on but the size of the deal could not be revealed.

The company is in talks with a number of BPO companies for each of the four geographical regions where Bharti is present through 16 cellular and five basic telephony licences.

Bharti has already outsourced a significant part of its call centre requirements for its pre-paid card business to small agencies. Teletech India, a joint venture between Bharti and US-based Teletech also handles call centre traffic for pre-paid users.

Company sources said while pre-paid outsourcing contracts might be shifted to larger BPO companies, Teletech would continue to handle call centre operations for Bharti's circles in north India.

The call centre requirements for Bharti's post-paid subscribers are handled in-house, with special units for high-end customers. Bharti has 4-5 customer call centres across the country.

If Bharti succeeds in concluding a deal with BPO service providers, the company will be the first telecom operator in the country that will focus only on the marketing and branding of telecom services.

Bharti has outsourced its countrywide network and equipment management to Ericsson and IBM is managing the company's information technology requirements.

Analysts said the Bharti model would become the trend with more telecom operators outsourcing business processes to achieve cost savings of up to 30 per cent.

"With increasing competition and declining tariffs, operators are looking at best practices to claim a larger share of the market without increasing operational expenses. In this scenario, outsourcing offers the perfect solution," said an analyst.

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Leaner Bharti

• Call centre outsourcing will leave Bharti with only marketing and branding activities
• Cellular network management outsourced to Ericsson for $400 mn for three years
• IT services and hardware outsourced to IBM for $750 million for ten years