Source: www.hindustantimes.com

After serving customers outside India, outsourcing companies are now looking inwards. The burgeoning domestic market, which is throwing up opportunities in retailing, telecom, banking and financial services, is being eyed by Indian outsourcing companies like Aegis, Intelenet, Firstsource and 3i infotech.

Aegis BPO, an Essar Group company that has interests in steel, telecom and retail, has acquired TeleTech Services, a joint venture between TeleTech Europe and Bharti Ventures, for $13 million.

Similarly, Intelenet had acquired Spanco, a domestic outsourcing company a couple of years back. Firstsource, formerly known as ICICI Onesource, in which the ICICI group has a 24.98 per cent stake, has opened five centers in Tier III cities to serve Indian customers.

Aegis BPO ranks among the top 10 outsourcing players in India and has revenues of $188 million. This acquisition means that Aegis BPO gets to service customers of Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile company. Further, Aegis gets 2,200 employees working with TeleTech and that takes its total employees who service Indian customers to 8,700.

The acquisition of TeleTech will be funded through internal resources and the company is planning more acquisitions. “We are eyeing sectors like telecom, healthcare, banking and financial services. Going ahead, this will offer us huge opportunities,” Aparup Sengupta, MD & CEO of Aegis BPO, told Hindustan Times.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

India can become the global sourcing hub for construction equipment, components and construction related knowledge based activities, an industry official said on Tuesday.

India’s economic boom has resulted in an exponential growth in demand for construction equipment and services. The construction industry is expected to play a critical role in the building of modern India, Vipin Sondhi, Chairman of ‘Excon 2007′, said today.

Excon 2007 is a five-day trade fair on construction equipment and construction technology beginning tomorrow.

He said the event, Asia’s third-biggest, is expected to attract 282 exhibitors, including 56 overseas participants, who will showcase products and services in an area spread over 1.10 lakh square meters. The exhibition will have pavilions from Germany, the UK, South Korea, Italy and China.

SK Mittra, co-chairman of Excon 2007, said the Indian construction sector has been growing at an average rate of seven per cent per annum, accounting for six per cent of the GDP and 38-40 per cent of the gross domestic investment.

Source: www.baylor.edu

The most recent trend in tutoring is coming from India. Along with jobs for telephone operators, financial advisers and medical analysts, jobs for tutors are being outsourced.

Companies like TutorVista, a two-year-old Indian tutoring company, use the Internet to communicate with customers all over the world. Students can receive tutoring in subjects such as English, calculus or economics, as well as help for standardized tests, such as the SAT or GRE.

Online tutoring has been successful, according to an article in The New York Times, but the lack of human contact may have some negative effects, said Margaret Thomson, a lecturer in the curriculum and instruction department.

Dr. Steve Gardner, director of the McBride Center for International Business, agreed on the importance of face-to-face tutoring.

“Certainly for something like tutoring, I think it’s going to be something that’s going to need to develop a lot,” he said. “If you’re looking for someone who can explain clearly to you a difficult theory or help you to get through a reasoning process, the kind of relationship you need with a tutor and a student is difficult to establish over a distance.”

Thomson said changes in learning styles for different generations may make a difference.

“I think a lot of learning takes place in a social context,” Thomson said. “However, this younger generation is much more computer savvy.”

Thomson said while her two older sons would study in group settings, her youngest son, who just graduated from high school, studied much more through online study groups.

“I would suspect that today’s learners would be much better at learning these things than previous generations would be,” she said.

Despite the possibility of success for tutoring at a distance, some would prefer to stay close to home.

“There’s enough prep here. I don’t know why anyone would want to go anywhere else. The (GRE) is graded by Americans; I would want to be tutored by Americans,” Houston senior Kirstin Hartzell said.

With the number of jobs moving across the Pacific Ocean, the possible effect on the economy has been called into question.

“I think it’s been a little bit overhyped on its overall impact, especially the U.S. economy,” Gardner said. “There are some functions that can be outsourced very well; others can’t be outsourced well at all.”

The outsourcing of tutoring, he said, will only slightly affect the economy.

India is also under capacity restraints as far as how much work it can take on, “even with the enormous population they have,” Gardner said. “If you’re outsourcing computer support, it doesn’t magically cause these people — the people that have the technical and education skills needed for the job ­– to come into existence.”

Investors have also been hesitant to invest in these operations, Gardner said. “There is a kind of confidence problem with these kind of investors,” he said.