Succeeding in Chennai
Let's look at what some of the BPO companies, which have thriving operations in Chennai, have to say. Says Sashi Ravichandran: "Over the years Scope International's business needs have grown in tandem with the growth and expansion of the Standard Chartered group. We have been able to scale up and successfully expand across other centers in Chennai. From just one, we have expanded to five centers across the city in a little over six years. With employee strength of more than 5,500, we constitute about 9% of the global workforce in the Group. We will grow along with the bank offering them process efficiency and enabling service excellence to the end customer across a wide range of services."

The aggressive scaling up of captives like Scope is an ample pointer of suitability of Chennai for high-end back-end transaction work. Other leading entities like ABN-AMRO and the World Bank have large back-end work done out of Chennai. Says Vardhman Jain, managing director, Insurance and Business Process Solutions, India and Manila, Perot Systems: "Our choice of location was both strategic as well as providential. We were lucky to unlock the first mover advantage in our choice of Chennai as our business process services hub. We achieved this by setting up our facility in Ambattur (a manufacturing focused industrial estate) in Chennai. Since not many companies were located in this area, we were able to attract a sub-urban labor pool which helped us by way of reduced attrition."

Perot began its BPO operations in Chennai in 1997 and today operates three large business process service centers in Chennai. It does a slew of processes out of Chennai like healthcare revenue cycle management for physicians and hospitals, healthcare claims and policy administration for healthcare players, claims and policy administration for life insurance companies, and finance and accounting work for corporate clients. It has 2,500 employees in these practices.

One of the biggest BPOs operating out of Chennai is Sutherland Global Services. According to a Sutherland spokesperson, the company made its large plans for Chennai based on the available talent pool. Sutherland also believes that Chennai has a good work ethic environment that is at par with the US. A highly motivated and passionate work force and a sound and scaleable telecommunication infrastructure make Chennai one of the ideal locations for BPO operations in India. Sutherland tapped into Chennai's potential very early by making it its first destination in India. And it's visibly happy with the results. Sutherland, as a company, has invested significantly in the training and development of raw resources available from Chennai, which has helped it not only in retaining and growing the talent but also attracting the best talent in the city. Sutherland has close to 6,000 employees here.

Another leading company is HCL BPO. The BPO services of HCL technologies started in 2001, and has today grown into five state-of-the-art facilities in Chennai with over 4,000 seats and 3,000 employees operating from Chennai. From its delivery centers in Chennai, HCL BPO supports processes like customer lifecycle management, finance and accounting, collections, order to cash, procure to pay, and technical support services among others. According to company sources, HCL BPO's presence in Chennai draws upon these inherent advantages, as well as on the talent pool, work culture, and infrastructure that the city offers.

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