Monday, October 30, 2006 Gurgaon Dell BPO, Delhi Strikes, Train to Jaisalmer

I guess I got caught up in Facebook and AIM a little too much and forgot to go to sleep last night. At 7:30 I set out for the bus stop, and caught a bus bound for Gurgaon. I couldn’t tell whether I was in LA or Delhi. Pollution was choking, traffic at a gridlock, and dust was everywhere. Being a Monday and with the highway construction, traffic was horrible and it took two hours to get to Gurgaon’s dusty old outskirts. I had to walk with a mob of workers (most didn’t look chic, fair-skinned, rich, or trendy enough to be call center employees). I didn’t know which way to go, so I just walked with the crowd past a bunch of trash heaps, construction sites, and squatter tents where the construction workers live. On the way, I passed new glass and steel offices of Tata Consulting, Teleperformance, Nokia, and Infosys. These are all either call centers or IT offices, for which India is now the world’s leading country. All the offices were surrounded by barbed-wire fences, and sprung up around fields of dirt, trash, sewage, cows, beggars, and bicycle rickshaws. I tried walking into a few offices, all with the same result. I was stopped by security, asked where my company badge was, why I was here, and I had to talk on the phone to security personnel, who refused to let me see the premises because of “security”. I got discouraged, and took a bicycle rickshaw to Aurobindo-Gurgaon Road, the main highway. The rickshaw ride was long, and took me past year-old modern high-rises, condominiums, nice flats, and construction sites. The land in this town is either: a brand-new office building, a huge shopping centre, nice homes, or a construction site for more brand-new office buildings. I passed the sleek multistory toswers of JSP, Citibank, and American Express, all new and clean. It looked like the buildings were in Hong Kong, but right in the middle of Sudan. I finally reached the Dell offices, where I had been on Saturday. I went in and was nervous they would turn me away, since the others did, and it’s rare for them to grant permission to tour the grounds. I was stopped by a team of security guards, whom I told that I had been here before and that I was told someone could show me around (which is true). They checked my passport, and saw that I was a Delhi University student on my Visa, and let me in! I had to sign in to a book, and they gave me a Visitors badge. The security manager, a 35-year old bald man gave me a tour of the entire site, which was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is just one BPO (business process organization) in India. A BPO is essentially an operation that oversees the outsourced aspects of a business. Originally conceived by GE in 1999, now companies such as Convergys, IBM, Bank of America, HSBC, Amex, TI, Ericsson, Microsoft, McKinsey, and H & R Block all have BPOs set up in India to outsource their backoffice work. There is always a need for call centers and customer support, especially for Dell, who sells direct to the customer. Because it costs a fraction of the price to outsource operations to countries like India, it is increasingly more competitive and thus attractive for firms to use BPOs. Today’s technology and telecommunications networks make it possible to work anywhere, from home, from the office, or from halfway across the world. India has emerged as the world’s leader in the industry, with 3.5 million employees, for several reasons: 1) It has a huge English-speaking population base, 2) The population is young and of working-age, 3) It is a world leader in IT, meaning people are already familiar with computers, 4)Government deregulations after 1991 have made it increasingly easy to conduct business here, 5) Heavy investment in infrastructure (notably laying millions of miles of fiber-optic cable) was done by American companies during the dot-com boom, and 6) Low cost of living, taxes, and wages cost the company 1/8 of what it costs to operate domestically. Although India is the leader, other countries like Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines also have similar outsourcing operations. Everything including tech support to sales, telemarketing, software design medical analytics, and tax return preparations are done here. It is good for US firms who make larger profits, US workers who now do higher-end jobs, Indian employees who make considerably more than the average GDP and can live and work in their home country, Indian workers involved in security, maintenance, transportation, and construction of facilities, and the Indian government who finds good jobs to minimize unemployment and emigration (aka the Brain-Drain) and for taxes. As for the actual workers, generally the company looks for BA or BS graduates with good English-speaking skills. Virtually all BPOs are exclusively English-speaking, dealing with customers from USA, Europe, Australia, and anywhere else in the world. Dell assumes that if customers are buying computers, they know English. The employees will speak Hindi to each other informally around the office, but all official business is conducted in English. Graduates with good speaking skills are the requirement, but different departments have specific criteria. And of course, there is on-the-job training for the technical specifics. But people are usually familiar with computers, anyways. When BPOs were in the developing stage 5-6 years ago, Dell would provide accent training and make Indian representatives use aliases, say pretending that Rajiv Singh from Punjab is really “John Smith from Indiana”. But now, they don’t make employees deny that they are Indian, and English is becoming standardized and homogenized around the world through globalization. Thus, it’s effective to communicate without requiring accent training. To attract employees, put ads in the paper, use HR consultants, and do campus and walk-in interviews. There are many applicants for relatively few spots, and competition, as with anywhere in India, is fierce. The typical entry-level worker makes between $250 and $300 per month. It used to be a really good job, but now since the cost of living is so high in high-tech centers like Gurgaon, it’s an average-high-end job. Because of BPOs and globalization, though, purchasing power, especially because of access to credit, is high for this new Indian middle class. This is why in these high-tech centers, huge American-style shopping malls have also sprung up. The workers themselves are mostly in their mid-20’s, skinny, attractive, trendy, and all have the latest cell phones. Men dress in jeans or slacks and polo shirts. Women dress in jeans and shirts, and some wear Punjabi suits. But there is no dress code apart from “Office attire”. Most employees live in Delhi, so transportation is arranged, to and from the office in AC cabs with a chauffer. Other benefits include free (or highly-like 99%-subsidized) meals at cafeterias and cafes in the building, tiffin services or home lunch deliveries. The office also supplies cups with free tea or filtered water from jugs like in the US. Employees also get free medical insurance, relocation benefits, and a Providian (like a Roth IRA) fund. The security manager first took me to the waiting room, which looked like a futuristic lounge with wood, marble, and glass covering the walls, doors, and floor. Dell ads, with pictures of happy young Indian people, desktop computers, white athletes, and glowing facts about the company covered the walls, along with plasma televisions. The normal workday is from 10am-7pm, to cater to business hours of the Americas. Therefore, the employees spend the night awake and the day sleeping. So, there were only a few workers at their desks, mostly just chatting to each other or playing at their computers. The employees are all given computers, either desktops or notebooks depending on job. They all get a personal workstation answering or making calls. Each desk (in a row of long desks in a large but nice-smelling, modern carpeted office room) has a state-of-the-art Dell desktop, with Microsoft Windows. Every work station has a few drawers, with a cutting edge phone. The phone has a touchscreen, and a host of other useless features. It uses high-bandwidth satellite (meaning it connects wirelessly to a satellite in space through a company called VSNL). They use the municipal power supply, but have huge and effective Cummins backup generators on standby. Everything is cutting edge and seamlessly efficient. The industry demands seamless perfection. But being in the building, you’d never know you were in India, it seems like you’re in Texas, at Dell headquarters. The building itself seemed to have a lot of large call center office rooms, along with some smaller conference rooms, training areas, lounges, nice bathrooms, cafeterias, and computer rooms with every Dell model on site, and huge power and server rooms. Even though it seemed large, this is Dell’s temporary call center in Gurgaon. It’s on the fourth floor of a rented building. They’re in the process of building nearby a nice huge complex with a fitness center, plus more space and amenities. This site currently only employs 800 workers, compared to 30,000 in all of Dell’s India operations. This outfit only handles calls to the Middle East and Europe. Dell’s other call center locations include Bangalore (the center of the IT and BPO industries of India), Hyderabad (vying with Bangalore for position as the outsourcing capital), and Chandigarh (Dell’s India headquarters located in Punjab), all of which handle calls from the US. The reason the call centers are located in Gurgaon, in Haryana, just outside Delhi, instead of in Delhi, is that land prices and taxes are exorbitant in Delhi, and in the surrounding areas of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Plus, there was originally an abundance of land and labor force just outside of Delhi. That being said, most of the employees live in Delhi. It was really interesting hearing all about the call centers back home, talking to Indians on customer support, and now actually seeing these call centers at work. After that, I took the bus back to Delhi. I couldn’t take the Metro to Civil Lines for some reason, and so I had to hire a bicycle rickshaw. When I neared the Metro station and Ram Kishore Road to go to my house, I saw why the Metro was closed. There were hundreds of people, on foot, and spilling out of cars with loudspeakers and picket signs in Hindi, yelling and protesting. I was going to eat at Fiesta, and realized that it was closed. Along with every other store in town. Every business had its doors closed, the only things open were the dhabas. I walked home, having to navigate through a sea of people through the normally deserted alleys. I’m guessing some influential people live in Civil Lines, so they are protesting at their homes. I later found out that these are a continuation of the riots of last month, when thousands of people protested all over South Delhi (and seven people died) to protest the zoning laws that Delhi had imposed all of a sudden. This would mean a massive loss of jobs for commoners all over Delhi, and as a result, the whole of North Delhi was shut down in boycott, for today. Apparently everything in Connaught Place, the downtown center of town, was closed. I felt like I was living in Communist Russia, where you have to stock up on food because winter is approaching, but there is no food to buy because there are no businesses. Well, luckily I left Delhi just in time for the riots. I went to the train station with Tara, Snehal, Luke, and Nikhil, for our camel-intensive trip to Jaisalmer (for the camel safari) and Pushkar (for the camel fair) in Rajasthan. Luckily I was able to snag a bite to eat at the only restaurant in town that, of course, doesn’t give a damn about the plight of the poor Indian masses on strike; McDonalds. Then we caught the 6:00 train to Jaisalmer, except I was in sleeper and they’re in 3AC because I’m cheap. It felt like I was black during the 1940s.