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These are the days of BPO, the hottest three-letter word in town. Their presence is pervasive across Gurgaon, Bangalore and Hyderabad and the indication of their boom is manifested in the Taveras, Sumos, Indicas and the Qualises which snake through dusty, potholed roads ferrying the twenty somethings from middle-class suburbs into swank state-of-the-art facilities that are totally cut off from the chaos outside. While these scenes have become familiar in the above cities, we looked at other emerging BPO locations. It would be surprising to many that Chennai too has attracted its share of BPOs. Though a late starter, the city is home to some of the leading BPOs in the country, whether a direct base or a delivery facility of a major BPO.

Now, Chennai
Chennai's slow start and its inability to attract some of the larger BPO investments in the initial days was more to do with some perception problems. As a result, some of the bigger BPO initiatives went to Bangalore, Mumbai or the NCR region. This was mainly because the government during that time had a mixed economic vision, unlike its neighbors-Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh-which had IT savvy and highly accessible leadership. But things started changing in the late 1990s and facilities like Tidel Park and developing the IT corridor attracted large scale IT investments that in turn boosted the overall perception of Chennai.

The Ground Realities
When the IT outsourcing boom reached its pinnacle in the mid-1990s, Chennai sowed some of the initial seeds of the BPO through medical transcription services. A company called Nittany was very popular at that time. Chennai has always remained a fertile ground for domain experts on finance as it is home to some of the best finance and technology professionals. Given this background, a lot of high-end, complex analytical transaction business processes are today delivered out of Chennai. The numbers are growing, and each year processes of greater complexity are delivered out of Chennai.

Actually, some of the earliest forms of BPO originated in Chennai. Take the case of automotive major Ford which transferred some of its Asia Pacific accounting work to Chennai in the mid 1990s, when Ford's Indian subsidiary was launched in the country.

Scope International, the wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, a captive shared service center, was established in Chennai in 2000. Says Sashi Ravichandran, head, Corporate Affairs, Standard Chartered-Scope International, "We selected Chennai after an in-depth global study that was commissioned by the bank for the best possible location in which to set up this center, and exhaustive research was conducted taking into consideration several factors including cost of living and availability of real estate; depth and quality of available talent, including their qualifications and language skills; local labor regulations; the ease of entering and setting up the business; accessibility and infrastructure including transport; technology and telecom; connectivity; living environment; tax regulations and benefits; and healthcare facilities."

For Standard Chartered Bank, Chennai emerged as the number one choice in the study, and plans were quickly made to set up the new-shared services center. In the space of approximately twelve months, Scope International set up its complete operations under six different business verticals-the first one of these was the software center which has today grown to become the largest development and support hub in the entire Standard Chartered group.

Today, Scope provides services in seven business verticals ranging from banking operations (both consumer and wholesale), HR services, financial shared services, technology support, software development and a contact center-altogether supporting over 50 countries where Standard Chartered has a footprint. It processes over 80 mn transactions a year in banking operations alone.

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