Archive for July, 2010
DesiCrew.in: Driving BPO jobs into Indian villages
It’s a global village, as was being told for more than a decade so far. The birth of the internet has resulted in death of the distance. But, still businesses in the IT field are happening mostly in metros and not in villages where 70% of the Indian population lives. Even though villages have educated youth, dearth of a non-agricultural career opportunity have been forcing them to relocate to the congested metro for a career. Back at the metro, their winning bread is cut almost less than a half due to whopping living costs.
All of us know of this fact, some of the people think of doing something to change and very a few might have really tried. Saloni Malhotra has been one of that few to make the change.
Saloni was working at a web-based ad agency in Delhi. Way back in 2005 she happened to attend “Rural Business Hubs Conference” at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi. There she got to listen to a speech on “Rural Based Businesses” by Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala. The speech by Dr.Ashok and the presence of Saloni Malhotra there had definitely been a spark to ignite the engines at the right stroke.
Padmashri. Ashok Jhunjhunwala leads the TeNeT Group at IIT Madras which has incubated several technologies to develop Telecom and Banking products for Indian Urban and Rural markets. He chairs Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) at IIT Madras and is a member of Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
Just a month after getting inspired by Dr.Ashok’s talk and at an early age of 22, Saloni left her day job at Delhi to change things for good in the villages down South of Chennai in the year 2005. Being brought up in Delhi, Tamil language is a first time experience for her, but that hiccup had never hampered her entrepreneurial energy. She took the daunting task of travelling across different villages in Tamil Nadu to undertake small pilot projects for nearly 2 years.
Saloni’s vision to make educated rural Indians prosper with a job at the comfort of their native village saw the birth of “DesiCrew”. Started during Feb 2007 at the RTBI centre in IIT-Madras campus, DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd, a decentralized BPO model provides competitive outsourcing solutions to clients, while thriving as a profit making social enterprise giving employment opportunities to the educated villagers.
DesiCrew trains the educated youth with the right set of skills to bring them in line with the needed requisites. The interesting part in this company is that they give ownership of activity to the crewmates, which make the team to enjoy their work and in fact prosper as a whole. Though their winning bread is smaller in size, it does not get bitten by too many living costs. Meanwhile, wealth is created by the community, which is again circulated within the community.
Now this 120 people strong company, running 6 village centres has a three stage recruitment process varying from project to skill requirements. Though their business still at a nascent stage is facing hardships such as power, bandwidth and client complaints, their continual positive performance is giving their stakeholders a confidence to make further business relations.
Stories like turning down overseas job and postponement of wedding by the girl’s parents in view of additional income are common. DesiCrew has not only given the first ever job of many to the women folk in the villages, but also empowered them both economically and socially.
With an annual turnover of Rs. 1.76 Crores, they dream to employ 1000 crewmates and expand to villages outside of TamilNadu.
At this outset, StartupStory had a few words with Padmashri. Ashok Jhunjhunwala without whose talk, this company would not have come into existence.
Startupstory: Very a few people are venturing into rural arena. What are the factors that you visualize as the reasons for this? How RTBI guides them to win over these bottlenecks?
Ashok Jhunjhunwala : Urban is where the amenities are; that is where the education, health care and livelihood is. Rural has little of these. No wonder few people venture. At RTBI, we emphasise that a democratic India is unviable if the rural-urban gap continues to increase; it is indeed a challenge, but a challenge worth taking up.
Startupstory: Our primary school education system is dearth of a subject on entrepreneurship. Will you opine for implementing entrepreneurship in the Indian school education? How you envisage as the right way to implement this.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala: In primary education, I would focus a bit more on skills. Also, the stories through which we learn has to incorporate entrepreneurship — not only that of big industrialists, but that of small entrepreneur.
Startupstory: A few words from you on DesiCrew. Of course, your talk has transformed an employee into an employer.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala: Well, DesiCrew is the beginning. The journey will end when we have a 25 seater BPO in every village of India.
Startupstory feels proud to interview DesiCrew, one of the pioneers in rural based businesses and take this opportunity to commend the brave attempt by Ms.Saloni at such an young age. We are sure that DesiCrew’s footprints are going to be the lighthouse for several Indian entreprenuers! May DesiCrew flags off the journey of more village BPOs to spruce up in our nation…
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