HSBC ramps up Indian outsourcing presence

Good news for Indian outsourcing industries, who has been facing uphill task in conveying financial companies about outsourcing benefits to India after UK channel 4 airs report about data theft from Indian call centers.

http://www.silicon.com reported that HSBC is planning to expanding its offshore outsourcing operations in India with a new BPO facility in Kolkata and a software development centre in Hyderabad.

HSBC is expanding its offshore outsourcing operations in India with a new BPO facility in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) and a software development centre in Hyderabad.

HSBC already has one wholly owned BPO subsidiary - HSBC Electronic Data Centre - in Kolkata, which has 2,000 employees working on back-office operations, and is now planning to set up another centre in the same city.

HSBC’s general manager and country head for India, Naina Lal Kidwai, said the second BPO facility in Kolkata will employ another 2,000 staff, according to reports in India.

 

technorati tags: Outsourcing, Outsource, BPO, Call Centre, Call-Centre, India, News, KPO, Offshore

Wanna work in a BPO? Take this test first

Glad to hear that finally government officials and NASCOM has started working towards saving Indian call centre (BPO) industry reputation. As I stated earlier in my post [Indian Call Centre:Boom or Doom:Concern Over Showing Cracks] that if we really want to safe this industry we at least need these three things;

* We need strict regulation for BPO employees.

* We need standard employment procedure for all BPO employees.

* We need strict rules for any cyber crimes.

I am very happy to read this news today in Times of India that Government and NASCOM are acting towards implementing proper procedure and strict laws to stop cyber crimes. Last week only Government announced strict regulation and punishment for any data theft, changes in IT Act 2000 to safeguard this industry and today NASCOM announced a capability assessment programme for potential employees for BPO industry. I hope some more concrete steps will come in force in future, like more training to our Police so that cyber crimes can be reduced, some more and strict security checks for potential employees who wants to join BPO especially who wants to join any financial BPO.

NEW DELHI: The Nasscom Assessment of Competence - a capability assessment programme for potential employees in the BPO industry, is all set for nationwide rollout from November this year.

The IT trade body, Nasscom expects that over a lakh young job aspirants will appear for NAC in the first year of its national rollout, Nasscom President Kiran Karnik said.

 

About eight states - Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala, Bihar and Sikkim are expected to launch NAC by the end of November.

The NAC is aimed at addressing the talent shortage faced by the industry, he said. “The aim is to create a continuous pipeline of talent by ‘transforming’ workforce into an ‘employable’ workforce”.

The pilot project for NAC was completed in June this year and about 6,000 candidates took the test in the select states, Karnik said.

According to NASSCOM, only 25 per cent of technical graduates and 10-15 per cent of college students are suitable for employment in the IT and BPO industry.

technorati tags: BPO, CallCentre, Outsourcing, India, IndiaBusiness, News, IndiaHappening

India tightens data protection law

As I said in my earlier post [Indian Call Centre:Boom or Doom:Concern Over Showing Cracks] Data security has become the top risk concern for many UK and US companies that are considering outsourcing operations. To keep our BPO industry government should bring strict laws for BPO industry and for BPO employees. We need to act on this and fast, as time is running out and world is watching us. Glad to see that Indian government finally made amendments in Information Technology Act (2000) rules. Under the new law, fines of over US$1 million can be imposed on companies and individuals who fail to stop data theft and the leakage of personal information.

MUMBAI - Responding to a string of embarrassing sting operations exposing data theft in the Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, the government this week approved amendments to the Information Technology Act (2000) aimed at making life more difficult for IT criminals. 

technorati tags: BPO, India, Outsourcing, Data, UK, USA, CallCentre,

Bole toh, these Munnabhais grab IT, BPO jobs

This is the problem I had highlighted in my previous article (Indian Call Centre:Boom or Doom:Concern Over Showing Cracks) about Indian BPO industry. We need proper recruitment procedure. All the BPO guys especially people who is going to deal with financial business should go through proper security clearance. We need strict laws for any cyber crime.

Any one can argue with me saying, well in fact one of my friend who is operation head in one MNC call centre in India has come up with this point,

“No matter what the prospective punishment there will always be people who will trade information for money.”

So for them I want clear that, it’s correct that No matter what the prospective punishment there will always be people who will trade information for money. But I am sure it will reduce the crime rate. If there will be strict laws and rules, people will follow it, people who don’t follow they will be at risk of getting strict punishment, so at least some people won’t do this sort of things, when they think about punishment.

If we really want to safe this industry we at least need these three things;

• We need strict regulation for BPO employees.
• We need standard employment procedure for all BPO employees.
• We need strict rules for any cyber crimes.

BANGALORE: They are the Munnabhais of the IT and BPO businesses. A qualified guy walks in for the job interview, but when the offer’s made, it’s an illqualified bloke who takes up the job. All too frequently, they get away with the con act.

Impersonation is an issue that just about every company faces today. And experts say it’s become possible on account of the massive scales of recruitment that makes close scrutiny a difficult task.

Some companies conduct 150 interviews a day.

Anjan Dutta, CEO of recruitment company Career Graph, says that in telephonic interviews, impersonation is in the range of 5% to 7%, while in face-to-face interviews it’s about 1-2% of the total number of candidates interviewed.

“Wipro sacked about 50 people last year for such impersonation and other kinds of faking, IBM sacked 6 and Accenture 5. Typically, only 50% of impersonators are eventually identified and sacked, the others continue in the job,” he says.

BS Murthy, CEO of recruitment firm Human-Capital, says such incidents were rampant between 1998 and 2000 when US companies used to hire Indian engineers through telephonic interviews.

“That trend is now resurfacing, predominantly in contract and temporary hiring wherein rules are often relaxed,” he says.

technorati tags: India, BPO, Outsourcing, News, CallCentre,

BPO cheat flees after TV channel expose, cops clueless

Update:Channel 4 exposes call center fraud in India

This is interesting, How the hell he came to know that police and CID is after him? Any Clue?

KOLKATA: The white collar, educated criminal proved smart enough to be one step ahead of the police and made a quick escape, even as the cops were planning to raid his home and arrest him.

Sensing that a London-based television would reveal his identity and involvement in the selling of credit card information of his clients, the Kolkata-based call centre employee Sushant Chandak promptly escaped, leaving the police clueless of his whereabouts.

The CID of the West Bengal police is yet to secure any clues about what may have alerted Chandak to flee his house hours before the planned crack down.

When contacted by DNA, the DIG-CID (operations) Rajive Kumar said the CID did not have information on where Chandak may have headed. He, however, did not reveal who could have tipped off Chandak and refused to divulge any further details.

A British TV company had conducted a sting operation on the call centre employee willing to sell client information of 20,000 UK cardholders and were to air the programme ‘The Date Theft Scandal’, exposing Chandak.

technorati tags: India, BPO, News, CallCentre, UK,

Channel 4 exposes call center fraud in India Video Via Youtube

Update:Indian Call Centre:Boom or Doom:Concern Over Showing Cracks

This is small video I found on youtube regarding the Indian call centre fraud which was aired here in UK by Channel four on 5th of October. It hard now a days to make people believe that a problem is with people (employees), not offshore/onshore. This sort of fraud and identity theft can happen anywhere and in fact it has happened in US and UK too. Its not a correct way to present  whole BPO industry in India is corrupt or every Indian people working in call centre are greedy. Corruption is global problem!

technorati tags: India, UK, youtube, BPO,