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Journalism of Courage
It may have been a late entrant to the country’s bubbling BPO industry, but when the UK-based œ28.58 billion Next Plc’s wholly-owned call centre subsidiary Ventura decided to venture out and set up its first offshore centre, the mandate went to Pune. And with 10 million pound in its kitty for the Pune centre, the œ131.8 million 7,500 people-strong Ventura has decided it will not take a piecemeal approach for a fully voice-based call centre in India.
‘‘We have been present in a surrogate fashion since 2002 in Mumbai with a third party partner (Intelinet), so it was but natural to move to Pune. But we wanted to take our time for understanding the value proposition before deciding to set up a base here,’’ said Ventura country manager (Indian operations) Anupam Arun.
To begin with, Ventura will cater to Next Directory catalogue customers — the firm through its 384 stores sells clothing for men, women and children; housewares; and furniture — and begin operations from the first week of July.
‘‘We are hiring almost 20 people every week and will be close to 200 people when we go live with our operations. The ramp-up will continue at the same rate for the next six months and we hope to have 1,000 people by March 2006.
We have a capacity to have 2,000 people as full time employees and this we hope to reach in 18 months,’’ Arun said.
By year-end, Ventura, will migrate its travel and leisure processes from its Mumbai-based partner to the Pune centre.
‘‘Since ours is a completely voice-based process, Pune gives us a good graduate catchment population. Besides, Pune culture gives more stability,’’ Arun said, giving a broad hint why the call centres prefer Pune to Bangalore or the NCR of Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon, which have attrition levels as high as 50-60 per cent. ‘‘We are bullish on India and that shows in the investment (£10 million) that we have committed,’’ Arun averred.
