City BPOs do what they do best - outsource!

PUNE: Exactly at 4 every morning, around 50 Tata Indicabs (taxi version of the Indica) assemble outside Cybercity, a private information technology park at Magarpatta city, a township in Pune.
Half an hour later, not one car is in sight - they have all moved with their passengers.
Interestingly, a majority of these cabs are not owned by cab operators, but by individual investors.One such investor is 37-year-old Avinash N Kolgave, who works in the shop floor of a car company in Pune.
He recently bought his second Indicab and leased it to Pawanhans tours and travels, an agency that is in the business of transportation to and from Cybercity.
The IT park here has three large business process outsourcing (BPO) outfits, employing 2,000 people, apart from four IT service and research and development companies.
"This is better than putting money in the bank. Not only will the car pay for itself, it will also supplement my income so that I can clear my housing loan faster," Kolgave says.
And once the housing loan gets paid, he dreams of being able to use the car himself.
While the Rs 21,000 per month that Kolgave gets for a 4,000-km run just about covers his EMI for the car loan, drivers'' salaries, diesel and the wireless system (which Pawanhans provides at a monthly rent), he can hope to make Rs 7,500 per month three years later, when his car would be fully paid for.
The growth of BPO companies has spawned a new business opportunity not only for car fleet owners, but has also come as a new opportunity for retail investors.
"This trend started about six months back, when small individual investors started buying Indicabs to lease to fleet owners for extra earning," says C.V. Bhandari, managing director of B.U. Bhandari Auto, a leading Tata Motors dealer in Pune.
Of the 90-odd Indicabs per month that the dealer has been selling for the last six months, about 70 are being purchased by single owners. Pandit Automotive, the other big dealer, narrates a similar tale.
"Since working in a BPO means putting in odd hours, we have to ensure the safety of our employees. Women employees, especially, cannot go unescorted at those hours and, therefore, we take the responsibility of picking and dropping them," says Madhavi Dahanukar, vice president, operations, EXL.