AGENTS OF CHANGE: PRAMOD BHASIN

The genesis of India’s fledging business process outsourcing (BPO) industry dates back to about 10 years only, when General Electric Company (GE), New Jersey, U.S.-based technology and services conglomerate decided to set up a unit in India to move its back office operations here.

The man behind this transformation is Pramod Bhasin, who went to GE’s U.S. headquarters as an employee requesting the company to outsource to India. The concept of outsourcing itself was not very popular that time, and the prowess of India in this field was yet to be seeded. He convinced the company to begin with a small experiment with a call centre to update the records of GE’s consumer finance division.

The call centre started with 20 people. With no prior experience and no set business model, all his team had was a vision, enthusiasm and energy to make it work. Today, that small unit has grown in to the largest BPO company of India with 27,000 employees globally.

As part of the progressive outlook of Pramod for GE’s BPO operations in India, which then came to be known as Genpact Ltd, he broadened the company’s focus from being a captive centre to offering third party BPO services. GE accounted for almost 74% of the company’s $613 million sales in 2006.

Genpact provides Business Services and Technology Solutions and serves its customers from the U.S., Mexico, U.K., Eastern Europe, Philippines, China and India. It has also filed for its initial public offering (IPO) at NYSE. Genpact ceased to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of GE in December 2004 when private equity firms Oak Hill Capital Partners and General Atlantic picked up 30% each in the company.