Training the chauffeurs, a small segment of the entire gamut of opportunities, holds a potential of Rs 780 cr. by the year 2010
Looking at the repeated reports of rash driving and bad behavior of BPO cab chauffeurs, one cannot help but think, “someone needs to train and keep a check on them!”
Is there an opportunity lying in doing just that? Who else would be better to ask than the father of Indian BPO industry himself, Raman Roy. When asked, Roy said, “Getting a driver's license today is very easy. However, if we had licensing rules that ensured that the chauffeurs were fully trained, then this would not have been an opportunity.
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| “If someone came out with a certification that says, the chauffer had X kind of a training, which ensured that he followed the rules and did all the right things, would we, as a company, only take these certified chauffeurs? Yes, we would. So would other companies. The 600,000 strong workforce of the BPO industry is set to increase four times in the next four years. Training them all will be a mammoth opportunity. But people have to understand that it has to be customer-focused training on the lines of educating and training in the fields of mortgage, insurance, credit card, fraud management… ”Raman Roy, CMD, Quatrro BPO Solutions |
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| “It is a very demanding job, where a chauffeur might just end up doing a 24 hours' run. On top of it, they need to meet the timeline; even a five-minute delay will affect their performance rating, and incentives.” - Ashutosh Atray, VP - Training & Resources,V-Link Taxis |
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| “Since BPOs employ the services of several fleet vendors, the performance pressure points could be creating a vendor index, and analyze whether on-time performance is what’s needed, is it the cost, is it the feedbacks gotten from the employees, and so on.” -Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence |
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| Raman Roy on near future trends in the BPO industry “In 2008, we are going to see a lot of consolidation and maturity in high end processing. There will be a big issue of the rupee dollar rate, and of attrition. It is going to be a mixed bag of good and bad things. Right now, we in India only participate in 2% of the global market; 98% is still left untapped. Quatrro goes beyond the existing. We are taking this industry to the next level; we are setting up new things. Like, we set up risk management, nobody offered that; and so have we set up things for fraud control, legal, mortgage, and so on. I have 8 areas in production; I have 28 areas that are under evaluation. So, the opportunity is huge.” |
As far as drivers' training institutes go, there are a few players already in this space. Maruti Udyog Limited, who have teamed up with Road Transport Office (RTO) and various other government bodies. Many, including radio cab operators, use their service. V-Link, a fleet management company, recently launched Meru Driver Training Academy in Mumbai. This is again in association with the Road Transport Office. They offer a week's training focusing on safe driving, customer service, basic technical knowledge of the vehicle, brief topography of the city, emergency responses and roles and responsibilities of a driver.
However, there are certain hurdles for such institutes to take off. Such training would want the chauffeurs to dedicate themselves for an entire week, six to eight hours per day. Hence, convincing the chauffeurs to undergo this is one big problem that institutes like Meru Drivers Academy is currently facing. There are food coupons distributed free to the chauffeurs coming in for the training, but even those who run the academies know that this is not the actual fix for the problem. Moreover, the fee for each chauffeur could be any sum between four to six thousand rupees. This actually says that voluntary enrollment is far from possible. The BPOs need to opt for and encourage their fleet vendors for such training programs to improve the situation.
MAIA Intelligence, caters to the business intelligence needs of many BPOs and provides software solutions for performance management, like fleet management, time entry for corporates and such. “Our solution helps these BPOs track performance, like to see which time slot has the maximum load, do the schedules need alterations, and such,” says Sanjay Mehta, CEO of MAIA. Mehta adds, “Since BPOs employ the services of several fleet vendors, the performance pressure points could be creating a vendor index and analyzing whether on-time performance is what’s needed, is it the cost, is it the feedback from the employees, and so on.” This would let the BPOs identify the top performing vendors, and the operations head can sign future SLAs (service level agreements) based upon this.
Talking about BPO chauffeurs, Ashutosh Atray, Vice-President – Training & Resources, V-Link Taxis says, “It is a very demanding job, where a chauffeur might just end up doing a 24 hours' run. On top of it, they need to meet the timeline; even a five-minute delay will affect their performance rating, and incentives.” This is true to quite an extent. Many BPOs follow either a punitive or incentive way of dealing with performance. In the punitive way, a chauffeur will end up being ‘fined’ for not reporting back in a given timeline, hence affecting the performance sheet of the vendor he is working for. Even if there is an incentive approach, the chauffeur will try his level best to make it back before time. Both these approaches lead to rash driving and overworking to either earn more or to make up for the income lost. What is the fix for this? Roy enlightens, “It is a matter of setting up a process. I have worked with companies where we did not have incentive/punitive measures to get maximum performance. We had GPS-GPRS devices installed, and we knew precisely where the vehicle was. Training the chauffeurs is only a small component.”
Technology too can play a pivotal role in improving chauffeur and fleet-related problems. For example, in Quatrro, they have a GPS-GPRS tracking device installed in their fleet. Chauffeurs going off-route, and problems in these lines are taken care of with this system. However, there is another interesting scoop. According to an insider in the industry, the use of biometric devices can minimize some of the problems faced. The device can instantly identify and report whether a chauffeur has been blacklisted previously for any reason. Overworking chauffeurs too somewhat leads to negligent driving, so the device will also be equipped to identify and report if the driver has done a shift of more than eight hours. This is currently being implemented across the branches of a BPO company. Opportunity lies unexploited in someone creating and maintaining a centralized database of chauffeurs in such a way that all the BPOs can pull data from them.
According to Roy, the BPO industry stands at a strong 600,000 workforce today. This is potentially going to increase three to four times in the next four years. That would be a mind numbing increase of 2,400,000 more people coming into the industry, and they will need training. Will this be an opportunity? “It will be a mammoth opportunity,” says Roy, “But people have to understand that it has to be customer-focused training in the lines of educating and training in the fields of mortgage, insurance, credit card, fraud management etc. All these skills are not readily available, so people have to create these competencies if they were to start training.”
We ran some numbers to put an estimate to measure the possible market size of just the BPO chauffeur training space in the year 2010. Turns out, even in a very conservative estimate, the market size will be 780 crores,
if not more. Now that is just a small fragment of the huge opportunities space in the making.
| DARE/estimates | |
| As on 2007 | |
| Total number of BPO employees | 600,000 |
| Number of employees using cabs (assume 50%) | 300,000 |
| Ratio of cabs:employees (1:8) | 37,500 |
| Chauffeurs required each cab / 24 hours | 4 |
| Adjustment for attrition @ 30% | 45,000 |
| Total number of chauffeurs at present | 195,000 |
| Projection for 2010 | |
| Total number of BPO employees (Growth = 4 times) | 2,400,000 |
| Number of employees using cabs (assume 50%) | 1,200,000 |
| Ratio of cabs:employees (1:8) | 150,000 |
| Chauffeurs required for each cab / 24 hours | 4 |
| Adjustment for attrition @ 30% | 180,000 |
| Projected number of chauffeurs in 2010 | 780,000 |
| Training, Monitoring, and Certification Charges | |
| Fee per chauffeur for a one week's training | 5,000 Rs |
| Training refresh cycle in a year | 2 |
| Annual market size in 2010 | 780 Cr Rs |
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ROAD SAFETY PROGRAMS- HUBERT EBNER INDIA PVT LTD
INDIAN ROAD SAFETY SCENARIO
The rapid development and expansion of the road network and the increase in number of motor vehicles have led to a substantial rise in levels of both passenger and freight movement. Concomitantly safety related issues have emerged. India with 70 millions vehicles stands the third in term of vehicular population.
It has been experienced all over the world that the countries which are undergoing increasing and rapid motorization face proportionately higher number of road accidents. According to WHO reports “Global Status Report on Road Safety” more people die from Road accidents in India than anywhere else in the world, including the populous China
In India, like in many developing countries, the lack of knowledge of road safety rules among the population at large is a major factor contributing to the non-observance of such rules in practice. This in turn leads to unsafe road user behaviour and habits
Thus it leads to requirement of Drivers undergoing rigorous training so that not only their Driving Skills improved but also their Mental Attitude because Driving is more of Mental Attitude!!!!
At the outset, I would like to brief you on our Organization & about the various Training Programs conducted by us
HE is an Indo Austrian joint venture company, whose mission is to make Indian roads safer to drive upon. Our methodology is Austrian but the content is Indian and reflects the road and traffic conditions prevalent in India.
The constituents of traffic are - The driver or road user, the vehicle and the road on which they travel. Unfortunately, technological advancement in these constituents has not been of the same order. In India, this imbalance has created its own set of problems, where high technology vehicles have to move on lower technology roads by road users with comparatively low skills and knowledge of safe driving and rules of the road. Driver training in India could do with a lot more professionalism. The situation on our roads is complex and reflects the underdeveloped driver character. Thus it creates a need for the drivers to undergo rigorous training so as not only to improve his Driving Attitude but also his Mental Attitude.
OUR MISSION- is to make Indian roads safer to drive upon!
METHODOLOGY – Our Training is purely based on Research Work done by our Expertise in this field. We use a Scan-&-Teach interactive method of training the methodology is Austrian but the content is Indian and reflects the road and traffic conditions prevalent in India.
ROAD SAFETY PROGRAM
SURAKSHA & JAGRITI are post license driving training courses conducted by HE, to educate users of motor vehicles (including two-wheelers) on all aspects of safe & defensive driving.
These course cover important issues including -
Rules of the road.
Traffic control devices – Signs, Signals & Road Markings.
Factors influencing driving including stress & alcohol.
Sharing the road & respecting the right of other road users including courtesy & etiquette.
Defensive driving techniques including hazard perception
Driving in difficult & dangerous situations (weather / terrain/ road conditions)
Care and maintenance of your vehicle.
First Aid related to road accidents including what is required by law.
HE can customized any projects /programs to suit your requirements.
Every Suraksha participant is given a Safe Driving Manual & Rules of the Road publication, a Participation Certificate and also a “Safe Card” (after qualifying the practical).
The course mainly includes video films on relevant subjects such as road user behaviour & vehicle care & maintenance. Our training programme is relevant for all road users – pedestrians, two wheeler riders as well as LMV & HMV drivers
We also have the program DASP - The Driver Assessment and Selection Procedure. It ensures that the drivers being inducted into fleet operations conform to specified qualitative requirements pertaining to driving skills, attitude, and basic trade knowledge and are medically fit for their profession.
JAGRITI refresher courses are essential after 9- 12 months as all training should be reinforced
TRAINERS - Currently HE has trainers based at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, & Vadodara.
We also actively involved in conducting “Road Safety Awareness Programs” for School Students & are also conducting the same on behalf of some of our Clients as CSR Activity.
We are privilege to work closely with Karnataka, AP, Delhi State Government, for conducting various Road Safety Programs.
All our trainers are qualified automobile/transport professional with an average experience of 15 years+ on handling all types of vehicles, we also hold the reputation of having the trainers trained and certified as per the European standard, and all of them hold valid trainer’s license which needs re-certification every year with stringent norms.
However we will be glad to meet you or any designated person to personally explain the Proposal.
We do hope you find our proposal interesting and look forward to hear from you.
Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,
SHIKHA DATTA
PROJECT (CO-ORDINATOR)
Mobile: 09899245123
Email: shikha.datta@he-india.com