RuralShores to set up 100 BPO centers in rural areas

RuralShores Business Process Outsourcing, a domestic BPO firm in India which completed three years of existence recently, is expecting to set up as many as 100 rural BPO centers across the country and generate 10,000 new employments during the subsequent next three years.

Currently, RuralShores has established 10 rural BPO centers in seven Indian states, counting Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Presently, as many as 1,000 employees are working in these 10 rural BPO centers.

A recent website report quotes Murali Vullaganti, co-founder and CEO of RuralShores, as saying that over the next one decade, they expect to have set up approximately 500 rural BPO centers that would be employing approximately one lakh people. Vullaganti further said that they are yet to start generating profit, but look forward to turning profitable over the next one year. He added that since they started operations three years ago, they have augmented their customer base to 24 and the verticals that they are currently serving; include banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), retail, e-governance and telecom.

On Saturday last, the company announced the launch of its maiden voice process at its Chand center in Madhya Pradesh for a leading Indian telecom services provider. Employees at the Chand center will offer help desk support in Hindi for the client, it added.

According to Vullaganti, RuralShores will continue concentrating on training the rural youth, sharpen their skills as well as offer them suitable employment, whilst connecting corporate India to Bharat (as the country is called in Indian languages). He said that their efforts to develop, scale and impact are endorsed by marquee investors as well as young professionals.

Meanwhile, another report said that most major IT companies are now moving to set up their delivery centers in the rural areas. While already a few rural BPOs have been established in the country thus far, this has been an inspiration for other companies to follow suit.

As the BPOs are now moving to rural areas and are providing employment to the local literates, who no longer migrate to other places for employment.

Interestingly, the rate of attrition at these rural BPO centers is three to five per cent in comparison to 50 per cent at the urban centers, while the operational expenses are lower by about 30 to 40 per cent. This aspect has actually encouraged several It-BPO companies to move to the rural areas.

For instance, in August last, Wipro BPO, the business process outsourcing wing of Wipro Technologies, had set up its maiden rural BPO center at Tamil Nadu’s Manjakkudi, where it has intends to provide employment to 120 people and start operations with a pilot project having 50 seats a multi-national client operating in the retail sector. In addition, Wipro now intends to increase the company’s rural BPO center in Tamil Nadu to 500 seats through March 2013.

Similarly, Infosys BPO too had entered into an accord with the Andhra Pradesh government In October last to establish rural BPO delivery centers in as many as 22 districts. Infosys BPO has already set up the Kaup unit in Udupi district of Karnataka in association with DesiCrew, while the Bagepally centre is being launched with RuralShores.