The industry that sought to banish national boundaries is a bouquet of inspiring stories.
Born into a middle-class family that lives in the serpentine lanes of Delhi’s Muslim ghetto of Jamia (which is home to and gets its name from the famous Jamia Milia University) Zebiba went to school, dropped out of college, and was associated with several fringe elements in his community. His father, a devout man hauled him up for his ways and so scared was Zebiba that he swung away from the radical route that he was hurtling down.
With little education to speak of and poor English language skills, there were not too many opportunities to be tapped. But the desire to make a better life for himself was burning bright and he hit upon pizza-delivery as the answer to his woes. Since Zebiba worked mostly in the evenings, he found his mornings free and enrolled in college. He worked his way through a degree in history and also taught himself English.
He then joined a third party call centre that was doing simple financial transactions, impressed his bosses with his diligence and the ability to get along with anyone from all classes of society. Soon he moved into a “migration” role which was similar to the role that Shiv, an engineer-MBA, had played.
Zebiba now works in a proprietary BPO and travels the world to manage projects and facilitate the insourcing of global processes into the India centres for his company. A potential school drop-out and a near radical who was once hounded by the police is now a respectable member of his community, has a fulfilling job, is respected by his peers, and loves to travel the world. To achieve all this without the privileges that come to those who are born into wealthy and well-connected families or without going through the established IIT-IIM route would have been unthinkable in the old economy.
Chandrasekhar Doddamani
Born in the small but beautiful town of Chikmagalur, Chandra was a good student and had trained in Carnatic music. Shiv met him in Mysore where he was facilitating a workshop for a global third party BPO (with footprints in India, Philippines, Mauritius, UK, USA and Canada and employing more than 30,000 people across) with folks from across the world. One evening at the BPO’s Mysore unit, there was a party for the executive team. Chandra was the compere and Shiv was in the audience. Shiv’s expectations were minimal. As a typical city slicker, he had pegged Mysore and other such cities at barely a notch above the places that one classified as the rural hinterland.
Chandra was short, balding, and bespectacled, with a Groucho Marx moustache. He seemed diminutive in appearance and manner but once he took over the mike, he bowled everyone over, most of all Shiv. The music, the pyrotechnics on stage, and the shows that were presented surpassed some of the best that Shiv had ever seen. And finally, Chandra brought the house down with his rendition of what was then one of the biggest hits of Hindi film music.
He had a band which also played the rock anthems from Shiv’s growing up years with élan, moving from the Dire Straits to Pink Floyd without dropping a beat. Chandra had grown up in Chikmagalur. His father was a schoolteacher who had retired when his salary was at its peak, at Rs 800 a month. He was now running a call centre, while successfully pursuing a music career! Never again would Shiv look down on the rural hinterlands of India.
Yudhisthir Kewalramani
From a tiny coastal town in Gujarat, Yudhisthir had moved to Mumbai soon after he was born. He went to a prestigious English medium school and had grown up in a south Mumbai Chawl. He held a “clerical” job in a local bank for a while, and moved to a multinational bank where he was processing documents in his late twenties. He then switched over to a local third party call centre in his early 30s and became a team leader. After that, he moved to an MNC call centre, and by the time he was 35 years old, he had moved to Malaysia as the leader of the call centre.
Five years later, he moved back to India as the head of the call centre. He now heads a call centre owned by a multinational company where he is in charge of the entire customer service operations in JAPA (Japan, Asia-Pacific and Australia) and is based in Beijing. His dream, which he is close to fulfilling, is to go back home and build and run a school.
Arjun Dubey
Born in the town of Darbhanga in Bihar, Arjun’s father migrated to Lucknow to work for the Food Corporation of India. Arjun went to Delhi seeking his fortunes in the civil service or IAS entrance exams. Locked into his hostel room preparing for his papers, he studied Japanese as part of his course.
Soon the IAS dream was forgotten and Arjun went to Japan with a scholarship to study the language. Today he speaks, reads, and writes Japanese with, as Shiv understands, as much fluency as a native of Kyoto. Arjun’s father can hardly believe that his son now flits between the US, India, and Japan, as his organisation is beginning to migrate processes from Japan and Southern China into India (and plans to open a centre in Southern China).
Angela Davenport
The story would not be complete without one tale of reverse migration. Angela was born in Phoenix to working class parents, brought up in “straitened circumstance” as she put it, which implied that life was not all chocolates and cream growing up. Still, she managed to complete school and, guess what, joined a call centre.
For her family, this was a great achievement. It was definitely progress, especially as she reached the position of Team Leader at the age of 27. She was the rising star in the Davenport firmament! Unlike most of her co-workers though, Angela had wanderlust. When she found out that GC was offshoring work to India and later to Manila, she volunteered and went to Mumbai to support the migration that Shiv was leading. Apart from a few misadventures like wandering into the bylanes of Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar, not the easiest part of the city to walk around on the best of days, looking for Indian textiles dressed in her Tees and Jeans and her blonde tresses and American accent in full display a day after the US bombed Afghanistan, she took to the country like the proverbial duck.
Angela familiarised herself with India, Indians, and the work culture quite easily. She did have a few disappointments, especially when it came to matters of the heart, but beyond that, she made herself at home. She was part of the move to Philippines where, too, she managed to get around the country and its ways without any difficulty. Angela now works in Gurgaon with a proprietary US MNC call centre, and is a director-level resource and certainly one of the most successful exports from Maryvale Phoenix to India.
Excerpted with permission from Calling India: How India Became The Offshoring Capital Of The World, Satindra Sen, BS Books-Bloomsbury.
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Zebiba Khan
Born into a middle-class family that lives in the serpentine lanes of Delhi’s Muslim ghetto of Jamia (which is home to and gets its name from the famous Jamia Milia University) Zebiba went to school, dropped out of college, and was associated with several fringe elements in his community. His father, a devout man hauled him up for his ways and so scared was Zebiba that he swung away from the radical route that he was hurtling down.
With little education to speak of and poor English language skills, there were not too many opportunities to be tapped. But the desire to make a better life for himself was burning bright and he hit upon pizza-delivery as the answer to his woes. Since Zebiba worked mostly in the evenings, he found his mornings free and enrolled in college. He worked his way through a degree in history and also taught himself English.
He then joined a third party call centre that was doing simple financial transactions, impressed his bosses with his diligence and the ability to get along with anyone from all classes of society. Soon he moved into a “migration” role which was similar to the role that Shiv, an engineer-MBA, had played.
Zebiba now works in a proprietary BPO and travels the world to manage projects and facilitate the insourcing of global processes into the India centres for his company. A potential school drop-out and a near radical who was once hounded by the police is now a respectable member of his community, has a fulfilling job, is respected by his peers, and loves to travel the world. To achieve all this without the privileges that come to those who are born into wealthy and well-connected families or without going through the established IIT-IIM route would have been unthinkable in the old economy.
Chandrasekhar Doddamani
Born in the small but beautiful town of Chikmagalur, Chandra was a good student and had trained in Carnatic music. Shiv met him in Mysore where he was facilitating a workshop for a global third party BPO (with footprints in India, Philippines, Mauritius, UK, USA and Canada and employing more than 30,000 people across) with folks from across the world. One evening at the BPO’s Mysore unit, there was a party for the executive team. Chandra was the compere and Shiv was in the audience. Shiv’s expectations were minimal. As a typical city slicker, he had pegged Mysore and other such cities at barely a notch above the places that one classified as the rural hinterland.
Chandra was short, balding, and bespectacled, with a Groucho Marx moustache. He seemed diminutive in appearance and manner but once he took over the mike, he bowled everyone over, most of all Shiv. The music, the pyrotechnics on stage, and the shows that were presented surpassed some of the best that Shiv had ever seen. And finally, Chandra brought the house down with his rendition of what was then one of the biggest hits of Hindi film music.
He had a band which also played the rock anthems from Shiv’s growing up years with élan, moving from the Dire Straits to Pink Floyd without dropping a beat. Chandra had grown up in Chikmagalur. His father was a schoolteacher who had retired when his salary was at its peak, at Rs 800 a month. He was now running a call centre, while successfully pursuing a music career! Never again would Shiv look down on the rural hinterlands of India.
Yudhisthir Kewalramani
From a tiny coastal town in Gujarat, Yudhisthir had moved to Mumbai soon after he was born. He went to a prestigious English medium school and had grown up in a south Mumbai Chawl. He held a “clerical” job in a local bank for a while, and moved to a multinational bank where he was processing documents in his late twenties. He then switched over to a local third party call centre in his early 30s and became a team leader. After that, he moved to an MNC call centre, and by the time he was 35 years old, he had moved to Malaysia as the leader of the call centre.
Five years later, he moved back to India as the head of the call centre. He now heads a call centre owned by a multinational company where he is in charge of the entire customer service operations in JAPA (Japan, Asia-Pacific and Australia) and is based in Beijing. His dream, which he is close to fulfilling, is to go back home and build and run a school.
Arjun Dubey
Born in the town of Darbhanga in Bihar, Arjun’s father migrated to Lucknow to work for the Food Corporation of India. Arjun went to Delhi seeking his fortunes in the civil service or IAS entrance exams. Locked into his hostel room preparing for his papers, he studied Japanese as part of his course.
Soon the IAS dream was forgotten and Arjun went to Japan with a scholarship to study the language. Today he speaks, reads, and writes Japanese with, as Shiv understands, as much fluency as a native of Kyoto. Arjun’s father can hardly believe that his son now flits between the US, India, and Japan, as his organisation is beginning to migrate processes from Japan and Southern China into India (and plans to open a centre in Southern China).
Angela Davenport
The story would not be complete without one tale of reverse migration. Angela was born in Phoenix to working class parents, brought up in “straitened circumstance” as she put it, which implied that life was not all chocolates and cream growing up. Still, she managed to complete school and, guess what, joined a call centre.
For her family, this was a great achievement. It was definitely progress, especially as she reached the position of Team Leader at the age of 27. She was the rising star in the Davenport firmament! Unlike most of her co-workers though, Angela had wanderlust. When she found out that GC was offshoring work to India and later to Manila, she volunteered and went to Mumbai to support the migration that Shiv was leading. Apart from a few misadventures like wandering into the bylanes of Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar, not the easiest part of the city to walk around on the best of days, looking for Indian textiles dressed in her Tees and Jeans and her blonde tresses and American accent in full display a day after the US bombed Afghanistan, she took to the country like the proverbial duck.
Angela familiarised herself with India, Indians, and the work culture quite easily. She did have a few disappointments, especially when it came to matters of the heart, but beyond that, she made herself at home. She was part of the move to Philippines where, too, she managed to get around the country and its ways without any difficulty. Angela now works in Gurgaon with a proprietary US MNC call centre, and is a director-level resource and certainly one of the most successful exports from Maryvale Phoenix to India.
Excerpted with permission from Calling India: How India Became The Offshoring Capital Of The World, Satindra Sen, BS Books-Bloomsbury.