India, Still High Value

In the last two years, most BPO companiesincluding some of the top tier
Indian firmshave shown a definite shift in preference from India to Philippines
for providing offshore voice services to the American market. So has Convergys.
But unlike in the case of otherswhere this was offset by growth in their
non-voice work out of India as well as growth in their India domestic
businessit did impact Convergys Indias total BPO headcounts. Still the first
broad parameter to gauge the performance of a BPO firm. FY 09 saw the number
dropping by about a 1,000 to reach 11,000 (about 10,000 in customer management
group (CMG) and 1,000 in the human resource management group). Convergys
non-voice BPO is small and despite big announcements earlier, it has not been
able to crack into the Indian domestic market.

But the year was not all bad. The much elusive stability returned to
Convergys India as India MD Sukant Srivastava is close to completing two years.
He is the first one to do so after the first country head Jaswinder Ghumman and
a host of senior executives left in 2005, amidst reports of internal problems.

Also in terms of business, while the overall headcount growth has been
affected, India is still preferred over the Philippines when it comes to high
value customer interaction work like tech support. Last year, tech support
accounted for 25% of Convergys total business out of India. And that share is
growing. No surprise, Microsoft is the top customer for Convergys India. Also,
according to sources, Convergys significantly ramped up operations of existing
clients such as Orange, Optus and Citi, while AT&T, internationally its biggest
client, continues to be a large client from India as well. Chrysler was a new
client last year. The company also gained in some cases from vendor
consolidation initiatives by some clients

RANK 14	Convergys India
Sukant Srivastava, MD
Tim Huiting, VP, HR Hanumant Talwar, VP & head, India operations Ipininder Singh, director, technology Ashutosh Sinha, director, recruitment
FACTSHEET
l Start-up Year: 2001 l Employees: 11,000 l Address: DLF Atria, Jacaranda Marg, Phase II DLF City, Gurgaon 122002 l Tel: 01244713500 l Website: www.convergys.com
HIGHLIGHTS
Received the national quality award in the services industry category from Quality Council of India Appointed industry veteran Hanumant Talwar to manage India operations, reporting to India MD Started developing voice automation and analytic tools out of India, especially after the InterVoice acquisition Overall headcount declined by 1,000 during the year Ramped up Optus and Orange operations significantly Started an aggressive anti-smoking campaign across its centers

Convergys is slowly but steadily changing its India play from a volume game
to a value game. Apart from increasing share of high-value work Convergys is
also using India to carry out development in voice automation and analytic
tools. A lot of work related to InterVoice, which Convergys acquired, is also
happening out of India.

However, its ultimate success will now be measured in terms of its ability to
bag a few large deals in the Indian market. DQ