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DESICREW SOLUTIONS (P) LTD

Uma ShankarKrishna TejaMali SundaresanNeerad Kumar

Background• Started in 2005 by Saloni Malhotra as a test project

sponsored by Ashok Jhunjhunwala's TeNet group from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

• Connected the three dots in her head, ‘rural’, ‘business’, and ‘technology’ to give rise to The DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd.

• Incubated by RTBI* of IIT Madras.• Tried different models on a basis of trail and error• The ‘kiosk’ based model• The franchise model• The final model

• Registered as a Limited Company in 2007.

*IIT Madras did not have a formal incubator at that time. It is now called RTBI

The Need for a “Rural BPO”Market Need: • Alarming industry statistics of almost 100% attrition levels.• An outcome of cost cutting exercises.• Social pressures (especially in case of women).

• Insufficient marginal salaries to sustain themselves in cities. • The decentralized DesiCrew model seeks to fill this workforce gap.

Social Need: • OECD estimates indicate 130 million educated workers in rural India with little or no access to meaningful employment. • Migrating to cities is their only option. • DesiCrew aims to leverage this potential of rural India.

A Rural BPO?!PERCEPTIONS FACTS

Availability of talent in rural areas.

• Production staff, middle management and support staff.

The industry is already employing 60% of the staff from rural areas.

Infrastructure For the first time rural India has over taken cities in internet usage

Lack of Workable models Outsourcing is a very well established and a very commercial one at that : It’s easy to pick the model and replicate in a smaller area.

Rural BPO can’t do high end data entry and time sensitive work

From multimedia to plotting maps, It’s all possible with adequate training.

Statistics• 8.5 lakh jobs created by IT/BPO sector in Q1 of FY 2010-11.

(source: NASSCOM)• 60% of employees come from tier 2 and tier 3 towns.• 60% employees are women.• Almost 60% attrition on an average in the industry!

1991 2001 2011

73.1 80.3 86.62

44.759.4

75.02

Literacy Rate %

Urban Rural

Area Rural Avg.(%) Urban Avg.(%)

Logical Reasoning

70.5 73

Analytical Ability

68 70

Language and communication

65 80

English 59.8 70.1

Maths & Science

53.5 55.2Source: India.gov.inSource: NASSCOM

BPO related skills study

PHILOSOPHY

Vision:• To expand economic geographic boundaries by leveraging local talent pools to provide a competitive advantage to customers.

• A double bottom line (financial and social development), connects global clients with low cost back office centres in rural India.

The DesiCrew Model

Rural, Educated Unemploy

ed

D Touc

h

Crewmate

D Touch – Training Program District Level Training Centre:• 25-seater Training Center• Batches of 3 months• 50 people/ batch

• a minimum of 12th pass and basic knowledge on computers to be considered for employment

• The candidates are selected based on a screening test.

Serv

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in D

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Valu

e, C

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, Skills

The DesiCrew Model

Clients DesiCrew

DC2

Crewmate

Crewmate

DC2

Crewmate

CrewmateDC2 – DesiCrew Delivery centers

Services(completed Projects)

money

Distrib

uted

wor

k

mod

ules

,

Mai

nten

ance

of

cent

er

Finished

modules

Salary+ training

Services

• A distributed operations model, whereby the Chennai office acts as the interface between the client and the rural centers. • Rural delivery model is a network of micro-centres strategically selected across rural and semi-urban locations.• Each centre is professionally run with a 25 seat facility working in 2 shifts to provide back-end services to global clients.• Locations of the micro-centres are identified in those territories with a population in the range of 10 to 100 thousand.• The workforce manning these centres is built up by training the educated but under employed.

Advantages

• Lower costs for clients as overheads (operating expenses) at these centers are far cheaper as compared to the urban counterparts.• the client gets a cost advantage of up to 40% of their current

costs.

• Creation of computer based/ knowledge related jobs in communities where there are no similar jobs.• Lower attrition rates for the industry• The employees are far more rooted, in fact 70% are women.• Thus more loyal and happy workforce and better quality work

Scalability

• Yes the model is scalable.• Secondly, there is competition now.• A lot of others started similar distributed models– Which validates

the model in a sense.

• More and More BPOs are looking at Indian customers.• ‘The Global Delivery Model’ doesn’t always work.

• Indian companies offer 1/3rd of what foreign companies are willing to pay.

• So many are experimenting with the model – the Tatas, Wipro, Aditya Birla Group etc.

Source: www.desicrew.in

•They handle clients from Insurance, Market Research, Internet, Mobile, E-Governance and Social sectors

• The services offered: Generating, Populating and Moderating content, Digitization, Data Entry, Mailroom activities, Secondary Research, Translation, Beta testing of web products Website monitoring, et cetra.

SERVICES

REACH• 5 centres and a new center recently established in Kaup, Karnataka.

• 250 strong workforce

• Across 2 states- Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; signed MOUs for setting up new centers in 22 districts of Andhra Pradesh

• 21 clients in all, and 40 plus completed projects

Challenges

• Perception about Rural areas

• Infrastructure bottlenecks in Rural areas

• Competition in the BPO market

IMPACT

Source: www.desicrew.in

50 seats

1000 companies

100 people

720 Cr per

annum

RS 6000/-

per month

per person

72 lakh PA per village

IMPACT

=This infusion of money into the rural areas, is what we call ‘creating wealth at the bottom of the pyramid

Source: Talk by Snali Malhotra at TEDx 2011

AWARDS

• BID Challenge India

• Sankalp (Highly Scalable Social Model)

• FICCI FLO (Best Woman Social Entrepreneur)

• CII Seal of Appreciation

• The Mantham Award

Thank You