So, what's so great about BPO work? The big plus, for the large numbers who fail (or rather, are failed by) our education system, is the chance to get decently paid work without academic achievements. Many employees joined straight from school, giving college a miss altogether or pursuing degrees half-heartedly through correspondence courses. The only criterion for career advancement is delivering results—if you're helping the bottomline, you're on your way up. Vijay Kakar, one of Global Vantedge's longest-serving employees, a veteran of almost five years, joined as an 18-year-old and worked his way up through the complex hierarchy of agent levels, from caller to assistant manager, totally on performance. "No one here cares that I didn't go to college. I'm now earning five times more than when I started," he tells me.
Later, I catch up with two executives of a smaller BPO for a pre-dawn meal at a small restaurant along NH 8, the artery that supports Gurgaon's role as backoffice to the world. Sharad Bajaj, executive director of the Offshore Business Group, tells me: "Many of these kids come from backgrounds where they've always been told they're not good enough, or that all they can do in life is help out in their father's tiny shoe shop. Then they come here, work in a plush office, get taken care of, learn to make a difference in a global business. We're not promising them the world—just the chance to be part of the New India."
There is a flip side to this, of course. If the BPO industry stops growing by 2010, as some studies project, or the offshoring industry shifts to another part of the world, an army of underqualified youngsters accustomed to big pay packets will be released into a job market that won't have much to offer them.
It's hard, though, to think depressing thoughts when I'm surrounded by scores of optimistic young people relishing their first taste of responsibility. At 1.30 am, I'm outside the Vantedge office, watching the members of the first shift depart. This is a 'casual week'—employees are allowed to dress informally rather than in the regulation trousers and shirt, as a special bonus—and the scene resembles a college campus anywhere in India. Young people mill about in rock band t-shirts and baggy jeans, joking, laughing, smoking, exchanging phone numbers and making plans for the weekend. I watch them, struck by the incredible diversity of the people working in this industry. North, South, East and West, women, men, all faiths and hues—and everyone seems to be getting along. Dhruv Rakha, the HR employee assigned to show me around, tells me some have travelled all the way from Nepal. The glow of economic opportunity has made Gurgaon a happy meeting place for disparate hopefuls from all corners of our nation, and beyond.
