Mr BPO, Raman Roy, outsources the future

Nor is he trying hard to be grave. Partly because, right next door to his spare, large new office, is a ‘meeting hall’ where four smartly-dressed men have just made him a presentation. ‘‘I can’t tell you who they are, but I’m in talks. Don’t wait outside to ask them — they’re not right at the top of my list and may be offended,’’ he races on.

What will it be? Healthcare outsourcing (‘‘No, that’s just one of my four or five options’’) Consulting on retail outsourcing? (‘‘Not yet, not really’’) Financial services? (‘‘Can’t say’’). Your own venture, a Raman Roy BPO? (‘‘I can tell you in three weeks.)

Just the week before, Roy vacationed in China, where he gaped at the hardware for 10 days and returned to commit extra hours to Nasscom. ‘‘I wondered in Shanghai if I was in New York. I have offered to do whatever, to give India infrastructure, manpower and a sound system,’’ he says.

The sharp contrast with China did not stun Roy, though. A chartered accountant with 12 years in banking and financial services and two raging-success BPOs, he promises to leap right back into the outsourced world. ‘‘We (BPOs) are our own growth engines. We don’t need help to grow. What we need is an overall orchestrator. A game plan-conductor for the country,’’ he says.

So what if the best news for the IT sector in two years was reversed and sent to hang out in court. So what if we just celebrated $5.2 bn in IT exports when Roy knows we could have hit $7 bn.

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Roy shrugs, ‘‘At Wipro Spectramind, we were interviewing 15,000 people a month, usually hiring only 1,500. Assuming 1,500 were picked up elsewhere, that left 12,000 still unemployed. I am asking (the government), what are we doing to make these unemployable youngsters employable?’’

Surely, Roy wouldn’t consider a pharma BPO with his strong views on the job market. ‘‘Maybe I won’t go into contract manufacturing outsourcing, maybe I will. And, I’m not sitting on much cash, but I know people who will lend it to me, substantial amounts of it,’’ he says.