Spectramind
Hi guys, Dec 24,
Many of you have given me interesting responses to my joining a call center. I just feel that beggars can't be choosers and I just have no other option. Anyway the purpose of this mail is to tell you about spectramind. The info that I am giving you is based on whatever I read from the magazines and what I came to know about the company in the last three days. Most of the info is accurate and can be quoted anywhere without a problem. Just ensure that no one knows that I am the source.
So let me start with the spicy details. Actually the story of this company is closely related to the IT enabled revolution in India. It all began in 1989. Raman Roy the present CEO of the company, a ca was working with AmEx. The then president of AmEx came to India on a routine tour. After his stay in India he decided to set back office operations in India. And so was born the first serious call center or as euphemistically called the business process outsourcing center in India. Before the only similar kind if work that was done out of India was some ticketing work at British Airways.
Late in around 1995 GE hired Raman out of the company to set up their facility in India. His brief was to replicate the AmEx success at GE. And within a couple of years the facilities at gurgaon and hyderabad were employing more than 12000 persons. According to the various reports that I went through it was way ahead of the expectations of the GE top Management.
Seeing the success of these companies many entrepreneurs set of shop to do something similar. The problem with GE and AmEx facilities was that they were captive facilities. And the others simply did not know anything about management. So you had a lot of guys breaking up specially this year. Anyway around 97-98 VCs including HDFC and Chrysalis capital persuaded Raman to set out on his own.
So with an Initial seed capital of around Rs 65 crore Spectramind was set up nearly 20 months ago. The company was a 100% EOU and most importantly a non-captive facility. It is registered in Bermuda for taxation reasons. The EOU status also provides it with some benefits from the Indian govt. Spectramind set up its first facility in Okhla. The facility was set up around 13 months ago. This last piece of information is not something that I am sure of. During this period the company has grown at an amazing rate. Right now the company has around 1500 employees on its rolls. Recently about a month back they have got a second round of VC funding. This time it was wipro and the investment is $10 million. Spec is setting up a new facility in mumbai and the work on the third will start will start soon. Unlike most of the other non-captive players these guys have clients. Big shots form Dell, AOL, and guys like franklin mint and DFS are clients and more will join up soon. And guys like Deepak Parekh are on the board of the company. I wish to speculate that soon we will have a wipro guy on the board. It could be Vivek paul or even azim premji. By the way premji has been to the spectramind complex and it is Wipro's biggest investment till date.
So if you thought that call center is all about servicing calls then think again. The BPO services can be grouped into 5 different categories. 1. Data conversion example medical transcription.2. Rule set processingHR and accounting works3. Decision making/ problem solving4. Direct customer interface.5. Expert Knowledge services
The last one is real fundo stuff. One of the project being handled in this category is a Human genome project. The guys employed are all PHDs and the like.
The company right now has a turnover of around $21 million cool for a company which is yet to see its second B'Day. It plans to increase the turnover to around $121 million by 05. By then it hopes to have around 6000 guys on its rolls. Now this whole thing is not fiction. According to Mckinsey &Co. the total cost of BPO as it is being carried out in the world will be around $532 Billion by 2008. If this whole thing is brought to countries like India then the whole thing will cost just $141 billion. So it's a huge opportunity similar to the manufacturing sourcing the Asia pacific in the 70s and 80s. And India is expected to take a huge pie due to the oft repeated advantages. So we can see a China like thing in the next decade or so.
The employment generating capacity of this business is immense. In fact in the US there are around 7 million agents in about 70000 call centers that is currently showing an annual growth rate of around 20%.
Now let me bring you back to the company. It is a leader when you take the non-captive entities. Already the systems out here are said to be better that of GE which is the overall leader in the country. Amongst the pluses of the company the thing that stands out it's the top quality management. Apart from Raman who is often referred to as the father of the IT enabled revolution in India you have 9 others in the top management who have made their mark in the industry.
A brief Intro of the Veeps would be interesting.
Padmini Mishra is the VP training. She just stands out of the crowd. As I saw the others I felt that the whole crowd stands out. Anyway she's not even a graduate and was with tatas for about 17 years. When she left she was the VP training out there. Then she joined up GE as VP training.
Then you have Mr Varadarajan. He is the VP HR. His introduction is something that I will remember for a long time to come. He entered the room with a bag full of chocolate and introduced himself by saying that he was from an INSTITUTE CALLED THE xlri. After his pg he worked in an organization CALLED THE tatas. Then the consultancy bug got him and he joined up a place CALLED kpmg. Then he went on with the process and named a couple of more organizations like pwc, amex and so on. It seems that the fellow changed jobs like one changes undies.
Sunil Rawal the VP quality is a man with unlimited enthusiasm. He is from IIM A and has the experience of working with firms like telco, Kawasaki and so on. He takes great pride in describing his personal encounter with JRD and the ceo of Kawasaki whose name I don't recall.
Nilanjana Paul VP-relationships has been with NIIT and has a rich experience in IT marketing. Upendra Sing VP operations is someone whose organization skills is simply awesome. The quality of his presentation in terms of flow was simply awesome. Raj Dutta is the CFO. The fellow is an ex-HCL and was once rounded up by the ED for some minor problem. He has some strong views on the license raj and finally sunil gujral is the VP tech. A hard core techie is all I can say about him.
These are the guys say that they have some organizational values in spectramind. I have heard of such crap all over the place but after my experience with some great looking companies I had become a skeptic. But this company has me back as a believer. Whether it was Birlasoft or HCL info or IIS. I saw that very few employees actually knew the names of the CEOs. HCL tech was an exception but that was more because of the nadar name than anything else.
Anyway out here things are different. Every one from the gate keeper to some one who is someone knows who raman is and the respect for the fellow is something that has to be seen to be believed.
Then on the tech front the place is great. The whole place is wired up with cat 6 cabling. They have tie up with CISCO, Compaq, dell, etc. The security features are simply amazing. A hardware-based CISCO firewall provides almost wire speed. Then you have a "checkpoint" software base wall on top of the hardware firewall. All the memory is RAID5. Araya of lucent is the one for many of the voice systems. Then you have firms like NICE from Israel providing some incredible system features.
They have systems ready for processes like live help and screen help. In the former you have on line help being provided for things related to e-commerce. So if you may be doing some e-shopping and all of a sudden you are stuck. You ask for help and some fellow contacts you immediately through a series of options like email, chat and even telephone.
Then in certain processes you record all the screens. So in case of a failure you can pinpoint the exact source of the error. The back up policy is huge. The kind of memory requirements is just mind-boggling. Then there is a process team, akin to a consultancy firm that is responsible for devising the processes for the various clients.
So that's a brief of the company called spectramind. I intend to make a synopsis or a report for the unlikely event of my getting a call from some place. So if you have some suggestions or have some questions then pls ask.
And most importantly merry X'mas to all you guys.
love
Shijo
Many of you have given me interesting responses to my joining a call center. I just feel that beggars can't be choosers and I just have no other option. Anyway the purpose of this mail is to tell you about spectramind. The info that I am giving you is based on whatever I read from the magazines and what I came to know about the company in the last three days. Most of the info is accurate and can be quoted anywhere without a problem. Just ensure that no one knows that I am the source.
So let me start with the spicy details. Actually the story of this company is closely related to the IT enabled revolution in India. It all began in 1989. Raman Roy the present CEO of the company, a ca was working with AmEx. The then president of AmEx came to India on a routine tour. After his stay in India he decided to set back office operations in India. And so was born the first serious call center or as euphemistically called the business process outsourcing center in India. Before the only similar kind if work that was done out of India was some ticketing work at British Airways.
Late in around 1995 GE hired Raman out of the company to set up their facility in India. His brief was to replicate the AmEx success at GE. And within a couple of years the facilities at gurgaon and hyderabad were employing more than 12000 persons. According to the various reports that I went through it was way ahead of the expectations of the GE top Management.
Seeing the success of these companies many entrepreneurs set of shop to do something similar. The problem with GE and AmEx facilities was that they were captive facilities. And the others simply did not know anything about management. So you had a lot of guys breaking up specially this year. Anyway around 97-98 VCs including HDFC and Chrysalis capital persuaded Raman to set out on his own.
So with an Initial seed capital of around Rs 65 crore Spectramind was set up nearly 20 months ago. The company was a 100% EOU and most importantly a non-captive facility. It is registered in Bermuda for taxation reasons. The EOU status also provides it with some benefits from the Indian govt. Spectramind set up its first facility in Okhla. The facility was set up around 13 months ago. This last piece of information is not something that I am sure of. During this period the company has grown at an amazing rate. Right now the company has around 1500 employees on its rolls. Recently about a month back they have got a second round of VC funding. This time it was wipro and the investment is $10 million. Spec is setting up a new facility in mumbai and the work on the third will start will start soon. Unlike most of the other non-captive players these guys have clients. Big shots form Dell, AOL, and guys like franklin mint and DFS are clients and more will join up soon. And guys like Deepak Parekh are on the board of the company. I wish to speculate that soon we will have a wipro guy on the board. It could be Vivek paul or even azim premji. By the way premji has been to the spectramind complex and it is Wipro's biggest investment till date.
So if you thought that call center is all about servicing calls then think again. The BPO services can be grouped into 5 different categories. 1. Data conversion example medical transcription.2. Rule set processingHR and accounting works3. Decision making/ problem solving4. Direct customer interface.5. Expert Knowledge services
The last one is real fundo stuff. One of the project being handled in this category is a Human genome project. The guys employed are all PHDs and the like.
The company right now has a turnover of around $21 million cool for a company which is yet to see its second B'Day. It plans to increase the turnover to around $121 million by 05. By then it hopes to have around 6000 guys on its rolls. Now this whole thing is not fiction. According to Mckinsey &Co. the total cost of BPO as it is being carried out in the world will be around $532 Billion by 2008. If this whole thing is brought to countries like India then the whole thing will cost just $141 billion. So it's a huge opportunity similar to the manufacturing sourcing the Asia pacific in the 70s and 80s. And India is expected to take a huge pie due to the oft repeated advantages. So we can see a China like thing in the next decade or so.
The employment generating capacity of this business is immense. In fact in the US there are around 7 million agents in about 70000 call centers that is currently showing an annual growth rate of around 20%.
Now let me bring you back to the company. It is a leader when you take the non-captive entities. Already the systems out here are said to be better that of GE which is the overall leader in the country. Amongst the pluses of the company the thing that stands out it's the top quality management. Apart from Raman who is often referred to as the father of the IT enabled revolution in India you have 9 others in the top management who have made their mark in the industry.
A brief Intro of the Veeps would be interesting.
Padmini Mishra is the VP training. She just stands out of the crowd. As I saw the others I felt that the whole crowd stands out. Anyway she's not even a graduate and was with tatas for about 17 years. When she left she was the VP training out there. Then she joined up GE as VP training.
Then you have Mr Varadarajan. He is the VP HR. His introduction is something that I will remember for a long time to come. He entered the room with a bag full of chocolate and introduced himself by saying that he was from an INSTITUTE CALLED THE xlri. After his pg he worked in an organization CALLED THE tatas. Then the consultancy bug got him and he joined up a place CALLED kpmg. Then he went on with the process and named a couple of more organizations like pwc, amex and so on. It seems that the fellow changed jobs like one changes undies.
Sunil Rawal the VP quality is a man with unlimited enthusiasm. He is from IIM A and has the experience of working with firms like telco, Kawasaki and so on. He takes great pride in describing his personal encounter with JRD and the ceo of Kawasaki whose name I don't recall.
Nilanjana Paul VP-relationships has been with NIIT and has a rich experience in IT marketing. Upendra Sing VP operations is someone whose organization skills is simply awesome. The quality of his presentation in terms of flow was simply awesome. Raj Dutta is the CFO. The fellow is an ex-HCL and was once rounded up by the ED for some minor problem. He has some strong views on the license raj and finally sunil gujral is the VP tech. A hard core techie is all I can say about him.
These are the guys say that they have some organizational values in spectramind. I have heard of such crap all over the place but after my experience with some great looking companies I had become a skeptic. But this company has me back as a believer. Whether it was Birlasoft or HCL info or IIS. I saw that very few employees actually knew the names of the CEOs. HCL tech was an exception but that was more because of the nadar name than anything else.
Anyway out here things are different. Every one from the gate keeper to some one who is someone knows who raman is and the respect for the fellow is something that has to be seen to be believed.
Then on the tech front the place is great. The whole place is wired up with cat 6 cabling. They have tie up with CISCO, Compaq, dell, etc. The security features are simply amazing. A hardware-based CISCO firewall provides almost wire speed. Then you have a "checkpoint" software base wall on top of the hardware firewall. All the memory is RAID5. Araya of lucent is the one for many of the voice systems. Then you have firms like NICE from Israel providing some incredible system features.
They have systems ready for processes like live help and screen help. In the former you have on line help being provided for things related to e-commerce. So if you may be doing some e-shopping and all of a sudden you are stuck. You ask for help and some fellow contacts you immediately through a series of options like email, chat and even telephone.
Then in certain processes you record all the screens. So in case of a failure you can pinpoint the exact source of the error. The back up policy is huge. The kind of memory requirements is just mind-boggling. Then there is a process team, akin to a consultancy firm that is responsible for devising the processes for the various clients.
So that's a brief of the company called spectramind. I intend to make a synopsis or a report for the unlikely event of my getting a call from some place. So if you have some suggestions or have some questions then pls ask.
And most importantly merry X'mas to all you guys.
love
Shijo
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