Call centres: Round-the-clock service

It isn't Gurgaon-India's unofficial call-centre capital-yet, but Bangalore is no minnow. At last count, the eight major call centres in the city accounted for 10,000 seats, and 25,000 jobs. Now, the 24X7 businesses are upset at a recent bandh that has its origins in a disputed river-water sharing arrangement with neighbour Tamil Nadu. Fearing future disruptions of the same kind, the industry wants the Karnataka government to include call centres under the purview of the Essential Services Maintenance Act. Karnataka is willing to do this, but as Vivek Kulkarni, it Secretary to the Government says, ''It is difficult to convince people in emotive issues.'' Still, with Karnataka already a lowly fifth in Nasscom-McKinsey's study on the attractiveness of states for Business Process Outsourcing services, the state better do something.

-Venkatesha Babu

FLO-TSAM
Global Nurse
The nursing industry goes the body-shopping way.

Bodyshopping is a four-letter word in the Indian software industry. It isn't in the organised healthcare business. Loath to let any opportunity go by the Indian organised healthcare business had discovered a new goldmine, the bodyshopping of nurses. With an estimated shortfall of 20,000 nurses every year in the UK, and 150,000 in the US, any organisation that can promise a steady flow of trained, English-speaking nurses is bound to strike it rich. Apollo Hospitals is the first one off the block with a Global Nurse Programme. "We will train nurses so that they can work anywhere in the world," says Dr Yogi Mehrotra, Managing Director, Indraprastha Apollo. Here's how it works: the hospital trains nurses gratis, sends them overseas for two years or more, gets a fee per candidate placed, and signs them on when they return to India. With hospitals abroad willing to pay anything between $3000 (Rs 1,47,000) and $5000 (Rs 2,45,000) for every placement, the company is looking at a neat pile. Max Healthcare, the buzz goes, is eyeing a similar model. Didn't we say healthcare was going to be the next big thing?

-Moinak Mitra

EXECUTIVE TRACKING
Back-Office Rush
BPO and retail continue with their head-hunting churn.

Jayant Kochar: Tee blues

After nine long years with Lacoste India, Jayant Kochar is calling it a day. The high-profile CEO, replaced by Vikas Gupta from Warner Lambert's confectionery business Adams, is moving on to start his own OWN retail venture-a chain of non-alcoholic beverage bars, called Amorettos. The first stores open by the end of November in Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata. Meanwhile, British insurance major Prudential has snagged R.K. Rangan of AXA Business Services as the new head of its new back-office arm. Nagendra Venkaswamy, CEO of PSI Datasystems has just quit (apparently because of Sanjeev Aga's entry as EVP international diversification and head of it operations at the A.V. Birla Group) and is said to be joining Satyam's BPO arm Nipuna as COO. Who says this is silly season?

-Seema Shukla

Tom Peters: Here! In India! Wow!

GURUSPEAK
In Pursuit Of Tom!
Believers, sceptics, and even the curious all queued up for a taste of Tom Peters' lower-case world.

You can love tom peters or you can hate Tom Peters. But ignore him, you can not. Which is why India's corporate chieftains paid between Rs 17,500 and Rs 25,000 per head for a ring-side seat when the consulting world's 'loud mouth' came calling to Mumbai and Delhi last fortnight. The high-profile audience may not have left with any Eurekas, but the 61-year-old management guru and author of best-selling titles such as In Search of Excellence and Thriving on Chaos, lived up to his reputation as a corporate bully, telling CEOs to change or perish. And you thought anything ending with an exclamation mark couldn't be serious business.

-Seema Shukla