- BANGALORE, India - Ashwin
Harithsa hurtles down a narrow, dusty lane on a two-wheeler, swipes his
security card at the entrance of i-Seva and settles down in a fluorescent-lit
cubicle, a headset hugging his right ear.
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- At 7:30 every evening, Harithsa becomes "Nathan,"
a project manager working for U.S. financial giant Citibank in Bangalore,
India's answer to Silicon Valley.
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- His callers don't realize they are talking to a man on
the other side of the planet.
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- Few Americans calling "800" numbers --- whether
to seek a Citibank loan, to make reservations on Delta Air Lines or even
to ask about their food stamp benefits --- would know they are calling
India, the country that claims the largest share of corporate America's
back office processing tasks overseas.
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- Indian contractors have aimed to prove that just about
any administrative or service job that can be done over the phone or the
Internet can be handled efficiently --- and far more cheaply --- in India.
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- "It's a very profitable business," said Chitralekha
Narayan, 36, training manager for i-Seva, an information technology firm.
"This industry is slated to just grow and grow and grow."
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- "Business process outsourcing," or BPO, includes
all sorts of business, but call centers make up a huge chunk. And despite
rumblings by unhappy U.S. workers who have lost their jobs to foreign firms,
India's BPO sector is projected to grow as much as 30 percent in the next
few years.
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- Already, 160,000 Indians are employed in call center
operations. Unlike their U.S. counterparts who are usually high school
graduates, Indians in the business boast degrees in computer science, engineering,
law and even medicine.
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- India's call center industry accounts for a quarter of
the software and service exports from the country, according to the National
Association of Software and Service Companies. The market grew 59 percent
to $2.3 billion between 2002 and 2003. Total employment is expected to
reach 600,000 in three years.
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- "Offshore outsourcing is a win-win proposition,"
said Sunil Mehta, vice president of the association. "To remain globally
competitive, American companies have to access talent --- wherever it is
in the world --- at a lower cost."
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- Talent in the form of Harithsa, 24, and his 800 or so
colleagues who staff i-Seva's two call centers. Their clients include AOL,
Belkin, Symantec and Citibank. The company's six-story building comes alive
every evening with the chatter of hundreds of phone calls. Posters on the
walls contain large smiley faces with slogans such as "Think positive."
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- On America's East Coast, the day is just starting. And
Nathan is ready.
-
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- He no longer speaks English with his thick Karnataka
accent. Gone is the 24-year-old son of traditional South Indian parents
who pushed him to become a mechanical engineer.
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- Dressed in denim, Nathan watches "Oprah," "Friends"
and "Independence Day" to perfect his Americanization. He has
viewed slides of actor George Clooney in classes on personal grooming.
He has even sat through 48 hours of "accent neutralization" sessions,
where he has learned to stress his r's and say, "Get outta here."
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- Nathan knows that it's 9 a.m. in California when it's
noon in Georgia. He thinks New Yorkers are pushy and Texans lazy.
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- Chitchat about Braves
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- When a caller from Atlanta asks about the status of his
loan application, Nathan makes small talk while looking up the account.
He knows about Braves baseball and comments on the weather.
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- "Agents should not get lost or ever get caught off-guard
while talking to American customers," said Persis Diana, 21, an American
accent and culture instructor at i-Seva.
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- Call center agents work through the night and sometimes
complain the hours are long, the work monotonous and often stressful. But
the pay is relatively high for India at an average of $250 a month.
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- Agents are taken from their homes to their work stations
in white SUVs --- on any given night, 6,000 of these vehicles navigate
the streets of bustling Bangalore.
-
- Ajit Isaac, who runs a Bangalore recruitment agency called
People One Consulting, said he even met a dentist who wanted to be placed
in a call center.
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- Besides the draw of good money, Isaac said, young Indians
fall in love with the charm of working in an atmosphere that comes closest
to being in America while maintaining the comfort of living at home with
their parents in the traditional Indian way.
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- "It's quite appealing to them really," Isaac
said. "They dress like Americans, carry the latest MP3 players and
other gadgets. The cultural bandwidth is almost the same."
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- Backlash felt
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- But it isn't always smooth sailing.
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- Feeling heat from a increasingly vociferous anti-offshoring
lobby in America, many Indian call centers, including one owned by MsourcE
that services Georgia's electronic benefits helpline for food stamp and
temporary cash recipients, are hesitant to discuss their contracts.
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- MsourcE refused to allow a reporter within its walls;
the firm's agents who answer the helpline are instructed not to divulge
their location.
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- Last month, Texas-based Dell directed some customer service
calls back to staff in the United States after complaints that Indian technical
support workers relied too heavily on scripted answers and were difficult
to understand.
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- "Some people don't want to talk to Indians,"
said Namrata Yadav, 23, an agent for Daksh, whose clients include Amazon.com,
Yahoo, Sprint and Delta Air Lines.
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- "I've had people ask me if I am sitting on an elephant
or if I knew the positions of the Kama Sutra," Yadav said. "Others
say they don't want to talk to terrorists. It can be disconcerting."
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- Yadav sympathized with U.S. workers losing their jobs
because of outsourced contracts. But in the end, he and other agents said,
it was America's notions of free trade that gave birth to their industry
in the first place.
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- "Who are we to stop conglomerates from being business
savvy?" asked i-Seva's Narayan. "What goes around comes around
in this world."
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- INDIA Size: 1,269,346 square miles (about one-third the
size of the United States). Capital: New Delhi. Population: 1.04 billion
(July 2002 estimate). Racial/ethnic groups: 72 percent, Indo-Aryan; 25
percent, Dravidian; 3 percent, Mongoloid and other. Religious affiliations:
81.3 percent, Hindu; 12 percent, Muslim; 2.3 percent, Christian; 1.9 percent,
Sikh; 2.5 percent, other, including Buddhist and Jain. Languages: English
is the most important language for national, political and commercial communication.
Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30 percent of the
people; there are 14 other official languages. Government: Federal republic.
Head of government: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. History: The Indus
Valley civilization goes back at least 5,000 years. In modern times, Britain
assumed political control of virtually all of India by the 19th century.
Nonviolent resistance to British colonialism under Mohandas K. Gandhi led
to independence in 1947. Sources: CIA World Factbook; World Book Encyclopedia;
Research by ALICE WERTHEIM / Staff
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- http://www.ajc.com/wednesday/content/epaper/editions/
wednesday/atlanta_world_f3fd5bb823da10d00055.html
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