Global-O&O

SOURCE: Business Week
DATE: July 15th, 2008

Mohit Soapbox:
Interesting article. The debate on to go captive or go third party continues. The market today is not going to support a sale of captive given the financial turmoil.   Everyone wants to follow the GE Model but the timing is just terrible right now if you are looking to sell your captive to generate cash. Unless you are willing to do close to a fire sale not a whole lot of upside in the market. Interestingly the largest captives setup in India were by the financial services community and this group is hurting the most today. Impact of slowdown in financial services is being felt by the largest IT players (TCS, Infosys etc..) and their captives growth also seems to be slowing down.
ARTICLE
A monumental shift in how Western corporations tap into Indian talent is taking place. Companies are moving away from running their own offshoring operations and handing at least some of those jobs to Indian tech-services specialists.

The most recent sign of the sea change came July 10, when British insurance giant Aviva (AV) said it sold a 5,000-strong South Asian outsourcing operation to WNS Global Services (WNS) of Mumbai. WNS paid $228 million for these so-called captive operations in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, and Colombo, Sri Lanka. In return, Aviva agreed to pay up to $1 billion to WNS over more than eight years for handling customer service, account setup, accounting, and claims processing.

There has been a steady drumbeat of similar large deals in recent years, but industry executives and analysts say the pace is quickening—driven by currency swings, the increased costs of doing business in India, and the need for some Western financial services to raise cash to handle shortfalls elsewhere. “The writing is on the wall,” says Sudin Apte, an analyst at market researcher Forrester Research (FORR). “This is not working anymore.”

Labor Savings Aren’t Enough

Apte estimates more than 150 companies have shifted in the past few years from running captive operations to using a mix of internally run and outsourced operations. He expects another 80 to 100 companies will make the move in the next year or so. In an April report, his survey of 59 corporate information technology executives showed 22% of them plan to stick with captive operations while 66% will use outsourcing companies in whole or part. That’s a huge shift from the results of a survey at the end of 2005, when 55% of respondents said they’d run their own offshore operations.

A lot has changed since 2005. For one, many of the captive operations have swelled in size and have staffs numbering 3,000 to 6,000. Apte and other analysts believe offshoring outfits that large are hard for parent companies to operate efficiently. In many cases, it’s better to hand the business to outsourcing firms that have even larger-scale operations and can move employees from one project to another as the needs of a large customer base shift. The other major change is that the rising costs of doing business in India mean it no longer makes sense to move work there just for the labor-cost reductions. To pay off big-time, these shifts must include gains in productivity through process improvements and innovation that the top Indian outsourcing companies have mastered.

Other notable handoffs include the 2007 Infosys acquisition of Philips Electronics‘ business process outsourcing (BPO) operations in India, Thailand, and Poland; and the 2006 joint venture formed between Tata Consulting Services (TCS.BO) and Britain insurer Pearl Group. General Electric (GE) gave the trend a lot of momentum in 2005 by spinning out its Indian back-shop operations as Genpact in 2005. WNS itself was formed six years ago as a spinout from British Airways (BAY.L).

Economies of Scale

The Aviva deal gives WNS a chance to get bigger fast. The BPO specialist now has 22,000 employees. WNS bested a handful of other bidders. “This is a very sizable piece of business that makes us a company of a different scale,” says WNS chairman Ramesh Shah. “We understood the business, and we wanted to have a long-term relationship with them.”

Aviva had pioneered the strategy of hiring Indian outsourcing specialists to set up and temporarily run operations and then pass them off to Aviva. It was new to the market and figured it could benefit from the expertise of local players. WNS was one of its partners. But last year it reviewed its options and decided to reverse the way it does things. In a time of volatile currency and salary shifts, Aviva sought more predictable costs. Also, it believes WNS can wring more costs from its operations. “These companies have been better than corporations at driving efficiencies because they’re specialists in the area,” says Cathryn Riley, chairman of Aviva Global Services. She says the company is as committed as ever to having much of its work done in India, in spite of rising costs.

One of the advantages the Indian firms bring is their sheer size. Infosys, for instance, now has nearly 100,000 employees and plans to hire another 10,000 this quarter alone. These companies have hundreds of customers they can serve from their large delivery centers, using standard technologies and business practices.

A wild card in the shift from captive offshoring operations is the problems of big Western banks. Hard up for funds as a result of their mismanagement of real estate finances, they need cash. But analysts and executives caution that these firms may not be able to get the kind of money they’re looking for by selling Indian operations, mainly because the Indians typically drive a hard bargain. “Sometimes the price is too high for us,” says Kris Gopalakrishnan, chief executive at Infosys, which is now looking at two potential banking deals.

But Forrester’s Apte believes the banks may eventually be forced to sell out even if it means settling for less. “Their desperation is going to grow,” he says

SOURCE: IBTIMES.COM
DATE: JULY 16th, 2008

ARTICLE
India’s top software services and consulting firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has reported a 7 percent rise in net profit for the fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2008, in line with market expectations, even as it gave a grim warning of slowdown in outsourcing business prospects due to existing turmoil in the global financial market.

TCS, which gets at least 50 percent of its revenue from US clients in financial sector, said its net profit (consolidated) under the Indian accounting practice (Indian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP) for Q1 of FY09 was Rs.1290.61 crore, up from Rs.1202.93 crore during the corresponding period a year earlier (a year on year or YoY growth of 7.28 percent).

Total revenues from operations (consolidated) for the same period was Rs.6410.70 crore in Q1 of FY09, up from Rs.5157.30 crore during the corresponding period a year earlier (a YoY rise of 24.30 percent).

Earnings per share or EPS was up 7.32 percent to Rs.13.19, from Rs.12.29 during the corresponding period a year earlier.

On a standalone basis, under the Indian accounting practice (Indian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP), TCS posted net profit of Rs.1204.01 crore in Q1 of FY09, up from Rs.1073.85 crore in the corresponding period a year earlier (YoY growth of 12.12 percent).

Total revenues from operations (standalone) for Q1 of FY09 was Rs.5212 crore, up from Rs.4134.41 crore in the corresponding period a year earlier (YoY growth of 26.06 percent).

Geographically, revenues from the Americas, Europe and India grew by 23.23 percent, 25.13 percent and 40.52 percent respectively (YoY basis).

Earnings per share or EPS was up 12.12 percent to Rs.12.30, from Rs.10.97 during the corresponding period a year earlier.

During the quarter under review, the IT firm said it added 35 new clients whereas 8982 employees joined the company taking total strength of the workforce to 116,308.

Attrition rate stood at 12.8 percent overall, TCS said, adding, that it was 12.1 percent in the IT services business and 20.5 percent in the BPO segment.

Our retention rates for employees continue to be the highest in the industry and we remain on course with our hiring plans for this financial year,” Ajoy Mukherjee, vice president, head (global human resources), said.

“We are also working to increase the productivity and utilization rates of our employees,” he added.

The Board of Directors has recommended an interim dividend of Rs.3 per share.

“We have been able to respond to the challenging macro environment and drive growth in the business under tough operating conditions and manage costs,” S. Ramadorai, managing director and CEO, TCS, said.

Despite the impact of annual wage increases during the quarter under review, TCS has managed to extract “greater operational efficiencies through rigorous cost management programs that have helped us hold operating margins steady in Q1,” said S. Mahalingam, executive director and CFO, TCS.

According to N. Chandrasekaran, executive director and COO, despite a “challenging external scenario,” business grew in major markets like the US, the UK and Europe.

“Traction in the manufacturing, life sciences and retail verticals has helped drive growth in Q1. Our diversified business mix, portfolio of offerings and blue-chip clients across sectors places us in good position to deliver growth on our large base in the coming quarters,” Chandrasekaran said.

However, Ramadorai expects the profit margin of TCS to be hit by the ongoing turmoil in the global financial markets. “TCS is cautiously optimistic about the rest of the year,” he said.

“We are operating in a difficult environment. There is still uncertainty but there are also growth opportunities and that is the reason behind cautious optimism,” he said.

Tata Consultancy Services or TCS is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 116,000 of the world’s best trained IT consultants in 50 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of $5.7 billion for fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in India.

ABOUT INDIA’S IT-BPO INDUSTRY

India’s $64 billion IT-BPO industry employing 2 million people and dominated by firms like TCS, Infosys Technologies, Wipro, Satyam Computer Services and HCL Technologies that offer solutions like system integration, application development, and supply chain designing and back-office services, accounts for 5.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The industry, which grew in the mid-1990s and helped the nation’s economy surge to an annual growth rate of nine percent, is expected to increase its workforce to 8 million by 2018.

NASSCOM or National Association of Software and Services Companies, the consortium that serves as the apex body of the Indian IT software and BPO industry, has estimated that the Indian business process outsourcing, or BPO, industry provided direct employment to 704,000 professionals in FY 2007-08, and has projected that it will generate an additional 1.4 million jobs by 2010.

The lobby group projected earlier this month that India’s software and services exports would witness a slowdown in growth and rise between 21-24 percent to around $50 billion in the current fiscal year (FY09).

According to NASSCOM’s report titled, “FY08 Revenue Performance and FY09 Forecast for the Indian IT Software and Services Sectors,” the IT-BPO sector grew by 29 percent during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008 (FY08) to $40.4 billion but would moderate during the current fiscal year due to the downturn of the US economy, global food and oil crisis and currency fluctuations.

Meanwhile, total revenues from the IT-BPO sector, including from domestic business, would rise between $62-64 billion in FY09, up from $52 billion in FY08, NASSCOM said.

Though India’s large pool of English-speaking IT workforce and cheaper wages have kept it ahead of its rivals like China, Philippines and Vietnam, and helped attract business from western firms such as ABN AMRO AAH.AS, Nortel and Airbus, yet, global financial turmoil and economic slowdown in the US have taken their toll on India’s IT-BPO sector.

SOURCE: SIFY
DATE: July 16th, 2008
ARTICLE
24/7 Customer, the Los Gatos, California-based call centre operator, has terminated the services of 450 employees in Gurgaon centre due to a European client ending its outsourcing contract, a source familiar with the development said.

Pradeep Narayana, president, new services, 24/7 Customer, while refusing to identify the client or its location, told DNA Money “One of our clients announced a phased ramp-down of its offshore call centre partnerships in India due to a change in business strategy. We are one of the affected vendors.”

The BPO has centres in Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad in India. Narayana said the company is assisting those terminated to find employment elsewhere. Nearly 70% of them are said to have taken up the alternative options given.

In May, 24/7 Customer said it would up its global workforce to 10,000 from 7,500 with major hiring in India, Manila and Guatemala.

Recently, US-based Keane terminated 400 personnel for ‘further integration’ of its processes in India.

In May, Sapient Corp sacked 160 employees in its Bangalore, Noida and Gurgaon centres due to lack of experience.

SOURCE: DNA
DATE: July 16th, 2008
ARTICLE
HCL Technologies appears to have struck gold with a deal to buy the financial services division of UK-based BPO major Liberata (LFS) for $2 million.LFS has annual revenues of $60 million and an order book of $540 million spread over five years. It provides policy management, actuarial and analytics services for six clients in the life insurance space in the UK.

Ranjit Narasimhan, president and CEO of HCL BPO said, HCL Technologies will get four delivery centres in the UK at Romford, Preston, Croydon, and Welwyn Garden City as part of the acquisition. The 800-odd LFS employees would be absorbed into the company.

The all-cash deal would be funded through internal accruals.

Insurance-specific BPO is a $3.4 billion market in the UK and growing at 12% annually.

HCL Technologies plans to invest $24 million in the newly acquired division over three years to enhance capabilities in this space.

“The sale will enable Liberata to focus on its core BPO business in the public sector,” an HCL statement quoted Liberata CEO Robert Gogel as saying.

This is HCL’s second buyout deal in 2008. In February, it had acquired US-based Capital Stream, a provider of IT solutions for lending and straight-through processing for commercial banks and finance companies for $40 million. That acquisition gave HCL about 35 customers.

For the quarter ended March, HCL, along with its subsidiaries had revenue of $1.8 billion (Rs 7,083 crore) and employed 49,802 professionals.

SOURCE: Business Standard
DATE: July 14th, 2008

Mohit Soapbox:
lack of  physical infrastructure, social infrastructure and globalization infrastructures are critical aspects of why the Tier II and Tier III cities in India will have a slow growth in the IT/BPO services sector.  By globalization infrastructure I mean the relative lack of exposure to globalized corporates, clients. The challenge with India’s growth has been that outside of the few pockets of development within the country a large portion of the country has remained isolated or has a snail pace growth in services, infrastructure.  There has been a lot of talk and momentum about growth of Tier II cities but the start up cost for a company to leverage talent in smaller cities is high ( not just in India but globally). Given the market turmoil without right local and state incentives and support for infrastructure growth very few companies will look to expand a domestic footprint. I have seen a lot of noise in the press about companies opening up centers in smaller towns but those are more PR than creating a wider domestic footprint. Another challenge faced by the smaller cities is the accessibility and lack of services. A # of our clients which have visited smalelr cities as part of their vendor due diligence and selection have rules out moving services to these locations because of a lack of facility and reluctance in their staff to spend long duration of work time in these locations.

The companies who really want to leverage tier II and tier III cities have to do so by using these locations to work with domestic markets and build the talent pool. It is an opportunity but we see a long road ahead for these cities to be thriving business centers for IT/ITES related work for global companies.
ARTICLE
Lack of malls, multiplexes and other social infrastructure stall advent of the BPO wave into tier II, III cities

When 26-year-old Nirup was asked by his company to get ready for a stint in Hubli-Dharwad, he decided to hunt for a new job.

“What can I do in Hubli after office hours or during weekends? If I remain in Bangalore, I can spend time visiting shopping malls, multiplexes and pubs,” Nirup explained to Business Standard while insisting that the BPO he currently works for in Bangalore should not be named.

Nirup’s is not an isolated case, there are several others of his ilk who are not keen on shifting to tier II and tier III cities for lack of a proper social infrastructure like shopping and entertainment facilities.

Though BPO companies have the first-mover advantage while acquiring land in these tier II and III cities, industry experts admit the biggest challenge is attracting skilled employees to these locations.

At present, the total direct employment provided by India’s IT-BPO sector is 2 million, of which over 90 per cent is captured by the seven leading cities of Bangalore, Mumbai, NCR, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata. According to the recent Nasscom-A T Kearney study on `location road map for IT-BPO growth’, the share of sectoral employment in the top seven locations will decline to around 60-75 per cent over the next decade and that will subsequently result in the rise of tier II and tier III cities’.

“But that cannot be achieved by only installing physical infrastructure like power lines and mass-transport system in tier II and tier III cities. Efforts should also be made to create an ecosystem that comprises social infrastructure with the trappings of metropolitan life,” contended Saurine M Doshi, partner A T Kearney India. In fact, the Nasscom-A T Kearney assessment of 50 leading locations for IT-BPO sector had pointed out that a lack of recreational facilities was also a handicap for the tier-II and III cities.

For instance: while cities like Mangalore and Hubli-Dharwad were favoured by companies in terms of cost advantage, they fared badly in terms of social environment and location attractiveness. Though Hubli-Dharwad got an IT park a few years ago, it failed to make an impact because of the lack of social infrastructure. Youngsters who hail from that region prefer to enjoy modern lifestyle in Bangalore than lead a ‘no-frills life’ there.

It is a problem faced by the industry across the country, said H R Binod, Infosys senior vice president (commercial and facilities). In fact, when Infosys started a unit in Chandigarh, young employees complained there were no good pubs in the city and instead preferred to work in Bangalore, Binod recalled at the recent BPO Strategy Summit organised by Nasscom.

This apart, another major challenge faced in tier II and III cities, according to Binod, is with regard to spouse employability. While the seven leading locations provide job options for the spouses of IT-BPO employees, it is not the same with the smaller cities.

The IT-BPO industry has requested the government to create a clear plug-and-play environment in the smaller cities and to improve competitiveness among them, besides asking real-estate players to take note of the industry’s requirements in these cities. “If there are enough facilities in the smaller towns, it will surely attract both skilled employees and new clients.

Not just good access roads and class hotels, care should be taken to construct enough studio apartments for bachelors,” Binod suggested. Dubbing the lack of recreational avenues as a dampener, Binod suggested the realtors to study the Manila set-up where BPOs operate from shopping malls.

For the realtors, it has turned out to be a catch-22 situation. “What if we spruce up the place by investing crores of rupees and the IT-BPO companies don’t come there?” a prominent builder from Hyderabad asked.

In fact, a lot of real-estate players have begun to attend Nasscom summits and other IT conferences across the country these days to understand what the IT-BPO industry wants and how serious it is. While the realtors debate, the Union government has been talking about a panacea in the form of IT Investment Regions (ITIRs), which are integrated IT townships.

SOURCE: Business Standard
DATE: July 14th, 2008

Mohit Soapbox:
CMC has supposedly been around a while and was major player in the Indian domestic IT market. I wonder if it continues to get a step child treatment within TCS. With all firms having ambitious growth plans in Indian domestic market seems like TCS has not been able to leverage their current platform via CMC to grow.
ARTICLE
CMC, a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), reported net profit of Rs 23.64 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2008 a mere increase of 0.9 per cent from Rs 23.41 crore in the corresponding quarter last financial year.

Revenue of the firm at Rs 285.35 crore for this quarter grew by 18 per cent from Rs 240.75 crore for quarter ended June 30, 2007.

On a sequential basis, the company’s net profit slipped by 1.2 per cent from Rs 24.02 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2008–and revenue increased by 7 per cent from Rs 265.8 crore.

SOURCE: Associate Press
DATE: July 14th, 2008
ARTICLE Outsourcing and consulting firm Accenture Ltd. said Monday it received a contract from a Norwegian government agency to continue developing and operating an online portal in the northern European country.

The Bronnoysund Register Centre gave a $44.4 million, three-year contract to Accenture (nyse: ACN - news - people ) to continue application development and management of the online portal.

Under the agreement, Accenture will implement a simplified user interface and provide advanced security, among other terms.

The Norwegian government created the Altinn portal service in 2002 to simplify interaction among the government, businesses and citizens. It enables businesses and citizens to communicate with government agencies.

“The Altinn II solution adopts a business and citizen-centric, value-driven approach that will continue to transform the way the Norwegian government interacts with both businesses and citizens,” Accenture spokesman Roy Gronli said in a statement.

The Altinn II contract has three one-year extensions.

SOURCE:COMPUTERWORLD.COM
DATE: JULY 14th, 2008

Mohit Soapbox:
Lou Dobbs has been on this case and there is YouTubes to showcase his case. (LINK).  Nielsen has a uphill battle to continue to dominate the rating’s games. Given that set top boxes, google and others are chipping away or plan to chip away at the three screens (TV, Mobile and PC) rating games I wonder if Nielsen is ready to battle these challenges.

ARTICLE

The Nielsen Co. is giving up tax breaks that have netted it $1.4 million since 2001, in response to political fallout from an IT offshoring deal that has led to layoffs at its global technology center in Oldsmar, Fla.

Nielsen, which is best known for measuring TV audiences, began getting the tax breaks after agreeing to build the $100 million facility in Oldsmar, west of Tampa. The incentives were pegged to the number of jobs paying at least $52,000 annually at the tech center, which had about 1,200 employees at first and grew its workforce to 1,700.

In addition to the $1.4 million in tax breaks that Nielsen has received from the Oldsmar and Pinellas County governments, the company got $1.7 million from the state under an incentive program that has expired. The local incentives, though, were scheduled to continue until 2016.

But then last October, Nielsen announced a 10-year, $1.2 billion outsourcing agreement with India-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. That move was followed in April by the news that 117 people at the Oldsmar tech center would be laid off.

Although 50 of those employees have since been hired by Tata, Nielsen late last month said that it was cutting another 170 jobs in Oldsmar — and that some of the affected workers are training Tata employees to do their work. The company now expects to have about 1,300 employees at the facility by year’s end, plus 250 or so contract workers.

Gary Holmes, a spokesman for Nielsen, said the company decided to pull out of the tax-break program after members of the Oldsmar city council expressed “second thoughts about the agreement” because of the layoffs. “It became kind of an emotional issue,” he said.

That’s evident from the minutes of a council meeting held in April. One member accused Nielsen, the city’s largest employer, of “making a joke of the tax- incentive program,” while another said the company “had abdicated [its] responsibility as a corporate citizen.”

Despite the layoffs, the incentive deal “did everything it was intended to do,” said Mike Meidel, director of Pinellas County Economic Development. Nielsen could have built its technology center somewhere else, Meidel said, adding that the company still has enough employees in Oldsmar to qualify for the tax breaks.

SOURCE: SILICON.COM
DATE: July 14th, 2008
ARTICLE
Barclays is to cut 1,800 IT posts in the UK as part of plans to create centrally managed technology “centres of excellence” in key offshore locations around the globe.

The global infrastructure and service delivery (GISD) roles will be scrapped in the UK and new jobs created in Hungary, India and Singapore over the next two years, with 700 UK posts to be lost by September this year.

By 2010 the number of UK tech jobs at Barclays will be reduced by 1,800 - a figure that includes IT contractors as well as employees. That will leave 1,000 GISD jobs remaining in the UK, based in Cheshire and London.

This will allow Barclays to create around 1,700 new roles offshore in global technology centres of excellence.

Most of the affected UK tech staff will either be redeployed or offered voluntary redundancy packages. Fewer than 50 staff are expected to face compulsory redundancy out of the 700 posts initially affected this year, according to the trade union Unite, which said future growth would further reduce losses.

But Unite warned of higher levels of redundancies in the following years, as many contractor posts will have already been filled by redeployments.

Keith Brookes, national secretary for Barclays at Unite, said: “We can avoid heavy duty compulsory redundancies because of the long lead time on the talks between Barclays and the union.

“The move is inevitable but we have to ensure that the UK is maintained as a centre of excellence and we have that commitment from the bank.”

He said the majority of the redeployed staff would enter jobs at the same level and in the same locations.

Unite asked for all affected staff to be given three months working notice and three months paid redundancy notice, and for redundant staff seeking retraining externally to be given a £2,000 allowance.

Barclays has also promised there will be no more tech job losses this year outside of the offshoring initiative, Unite says.

A spokeswoman for Barclays said: “Barclays ambition is to become one of a handful of universal banks leading the global financial services industry, helping our customers and clients throughout the world to achieve their goals.

“We need to transform to a global organisation, able to serve the needs of our customers and clients who have operations around the world.

“As far as possible, we will manage the reduction in headcount by reducing the number of contractors and temps we employ.”

<>SOURCE: Business Standard
DATE: July 13th, 2008
ARTICLE
The IT-BPO industry is becoming increasingly alert on fake biodatas. India’s largest IT serivces provider, Tata Consultancy Service (TCS), has recently asked close to 20 employees at its Kolkata centre to leave after the company, during the background verification, found that these employees have used fudged resumes to get jobs.As a customer-focused organization, security is of paramount importance to us. We have a stringent background verification process in TCS. We take this process very seriously and have issued action against the errant employees. We have launched an internal investigation to identify the entire ecosystem and all involved in the racket,” said a senior company official.

In the recent past all the major IT firms, including Infosys, Satyam and Wipro, and many mid-sized firms have taken a hard stand on fake or fudged resumes. However, the incidents continue. First Advantage, a leading background screening firm, in its recent report states that 30 per cent of all the resumes they have screened have discrepancies.

In 2006-07, the company screened over 2 million applicants across industries.

Ashish Dehade, managing director (West Asia), First Advantage says, “The percentage has been increasing. In 2006 it was 16-17 per cent, for 2007 its was 30 per cent and while we are just six months into 2008 the percentage is around 30 per cent.”

TCS is not the only firm doing this. Earlier Infosys had asked close to 100 employees to leave in FY07 due to discrepancies found in the resumes.

Same goes for Satyam and Wipro Technologies. Some time back it was reported that Wipro would be sharing with other IT firms the database of job applicants who have faked information in their CVs.

Satyam has put in place a system that does a background check even before the candidate actually comes and joins the firm.

“Well most of the companies have put in place some procedure to tackle this. We started this process two years back and 100 per cent of our associates joining come through this system. This has dramatically brought down the number of resumes with discrepancies,” says Sucharita Palepu, Satyam HR MyHR Frameworks head.

IT sector is the second most affected verticals, banking sector has the highest discrepancies, when it comes to fudged resumes. One in every four CVs received by the IT services firm has some kind of discrepancies. And one in every six CVs in the BPO industry in fudges states the First Advantage report.

The problem is not just at the fresher level, it goes up to the senior level as well. “One of the leading IT firms was hiring a practice head. But after his background check it came to light that the gentleman with over 20 years of industry experience had fake IIT certificates,” says a spokesperson from a leading background screening firm in India.

To tackle this problem industry body Nasscom, created the National Skills Registry (NSR), which has a candidates personal, academic and employment details and undergoes professional verifications.

The registration numbers towards the end of 2007 was 160,000. However, despite the actions taken by IT firms Dehade feels that the problem will persist in India. “Education and employment discrepancies in BFSI, ITeS/BPO sectors have seen the highest increase in the past 15 months.”

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