Sparsh loses client
By Pulkit Sharma

Sparsh is the domestic subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services.  It offers state of the art solutions to Vertical Industries to meet their voice and BPO needs.  In 2008, Sparsh had 5200 seats operating 24 by 7, and was telling investors that it had the potential to scale up to 20,000 seats by 2009.  But it has lost a number of key clients in the last year.

Sparsh BPO was awarded the coveted Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance and Banking process in 2008.  This consisted of outbound and some inbound processes supported by 300-350 seats at the Sparsh Mumbai offices.

According to a Sparsh senior Agent who worked on this process, this was a money spinner for Sparsh with billing for the Outbound calling at nearly Rs. 23000/24,500 rupees per Agent per shift plus Telecom costs.  This resulted in revenues of Rs. 60 – 80 lakhs a month.  The Sparsh staff breakup was 11 quality executives, 17 Team Leaders and upto 4 Asst Managers and an Operations Manager.

Techgoss had learnt that Kotak Mahindra ramped down its outsourcing to Sparsh and severed all business ties in June, 2009. Kotak Mahindra has moved the process in-house.

The trend of loosing processes at Sparsh BPO began in mid 2008 now having lost HDFC Standard Life Inbound customer care, Air India domestic reservations inbound, Jet Lite domestic reservations inbound, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance outbound process, TATA AIG Life Insurance outbound process, Reliance General Insurance back office process, Hyperciti inbound customer care and Reliance Life Insurance outbound customer acquisitions process.

According to an insider Sparsh is going downhill mainly due to two reasons even as other BPO’s continue to grow and make profits. The first is not treating employees well and second is lack of a quality payroll system.