Nirvana's Kondur: Or Kondur's nirvana? Only time will tell

If you can walk away from a job offer from N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys-the buzz in Bangalore is that he sounded out the subject of this Self Worth on heading Progeon, the company's Business Process Outsourcing arm-you must be on something, or you must be onto something big. Raj Kondur, a 32-year Harvard Business School alum born into a prosperous agricultural family in Chintamani, a small town in rural Karnataka, and who went to the US in 1988 on a tennis scholarship (he was ranked sixth in India then) is certainly not on anything. And you probably need only look as far as list of marquee names that have invested in the former Morgan Stanley and A.T. Kearney employee's venture to realise that he must be onto something.

Nirvana (Sanskrit for salvation) is the name of Kondur's BPO company, and it counts Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey & Co, Citigroup's Senior Vice Chairman Victor Menezes, former Standard Chartered CEO Rana Talwar, and former Morgan Stanley Chairman Richard Fisher among its investors.

Then, Kondur has always been adept at getting people to buy into his dream. At 28, with investments from Microsoft, the Government of Singapore, HSBC, Standard Chartered, the Rothschild family, and the Texas Pacific Group, he launched, along with fellow Harvard alum Ashish Dhawan a $200 million fund, Chrysalis Capital, that set out to be just this. Then, in May 2001, Kondur abruptly left Chrysalis Capital.

Only, the way Kondur tells it, the departure was preordained by the kind of investments he oversaw at the firm, the non-dotcom variety. Spectramind and Transworks (the former acquired by Wipro in June 2002; the latter by the A.V. Birla group in June 2003), both BPO firms, were two such. ''There is no single Eureka moment that I can recall," confesses Kondur, "but I was fascinated by the BPO business and believed I could do better than what others were doing.''

Between May and November 2001, Kondur studied the market, spending "some time at Infosys" where "both Mohan (Das Pai, the company's CFO), and Nandan (Nilekani, its CEO) are good friends". But although he respects the company for its "value systems", Kondur isn't sure Infosys gets the BPO business. "BPO is a can of worms," he admits. "It has more in common with optimised mass manufacturing than it services; it is about quality and scale, about getting a process right every time.''

A chat with friend and mentor Rajat Gupta in November 2001, convinced Kondur that he was on the right track. "Rajat heard and supported my idea of how we could be a different player," he recalls. Energised, Kondur hit the road to sell the idea to other possible investors and recruit an A-team. That he's done. There's Manab Bose, the former head of hr at the Tata Group, who heads Nirvana's "organisational development initiatives", M.S. 'Ranga' Rangaraj, formerly CTO of Microland, who heads the technology function, GE-vet Anil Sharma, a Six Sigma maven, who is in charge of quality, Rajesh Kurup, a Reliance-hand, who is in charge of hr, and Ramkumar Krishnamachari, lately of KPMG Consulting New York, who heads the finance and accounting vertical. It wasn't easy. "I am a hard-core technology guy and didn't like the concept of working for a BPO," admits Ranga. "But Raj convinced me that we would be different, and I think we are". Technology is one differential: Nirvana is one of the few BPO operations in India built around an Internet Protocol based network (put simply, an IP-based network can handle more voice- and data-traffic than a traditional network on the same bandwidth).

Since March, Nirvana has been in the process of testing its processes, and has bagged six customers, and upped its staff strength to 250. Kondur, who hates "infrastructure lying idle even for a moment", expects to close the year with 1,000 employees. That should take him a step closer to salvation.

-Venkatesha Babu

The Attack Of The Clones
The mobility-limited mobility conflict enters a new phase.

Last fortnight, the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) passed its verdict on whether companies holding basic telephony licences could provide mobile services. Here's what you should know.

Why were both the parties pleased with the verdict initially?

Basic operators were happy because TDSAT, in a 2:1 majority judgement, declared limited mobility (aka WLL-M or Wireless-in-Local-Loop-Mobility) legitimate. Cellular operators took heart from the riders attached. For instance, TDSAT directed the government and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to create a level playing field in four months. This includes an additional entry fee and spectrum charges for basic operators, and limiting WLL-m is limited to a short-distance calling area (SDCA).

Will the TDSAT judgement settle the limited mobility issue forever?

Unlikely. Everyone is waiting for TRAI's consultation paper on creating a level playing field. After this, says S.C. Khanna, Secretary General, Association of Basic Telecom Operators, it will frame a response. Then, there's the other application filed by cellular operators before TDSAT to stop basic operators from using mobile switching centre (MSC), a technology that allows roaming and call forwarding functions.

What next?

The CEO of a leading cellular company says the industry will appeal in the Supreme Court against the TDSAT judgement. As for the basic operators, they are anxiously waiting to see whether the government will start policing the strict adherence to SDCA limits. The war has just begun.

-Sahad P.V.

STATIC
CASus Belli

Officially, all-government, broadcasters, multi-system operators (MSOs), and last-mile cable operators (LMOs)-have agreed to a September 1 roll-out of CAS. But issues remain. The pricing of free-to-air channels, for instance. Will it hold at the government mandated Rs 72 or be bumped up to Rs 150 that the LMOs want? While Zee has announced a handsome 50 per cent commission to MSOs, Star and Sony are mum. Truly, a cliff-hanger that will never make it to your idiot box.

-Shailesh Dobhal

At the launch (L to R): F.B. Cardoso, President & CEO, BPL Mobile; Bharat Puri, MD, Cadbury India; and Ashesh Shah, MD, E. Cube India Solutions

IDEA
Got Chocol8?

What happens when science fiction fantasy meets an inventor with one helluva sweet tooth? You probably get a vending machine that spews chocolates when commanded by your mobile phone. Cadbury India has installed 35 such machines across "congregation points" in Mumbai. All you do is SMS "AO1 603" to number 2233, and select your chosen bar from the machine's menu. The charge shows up in your next BPL phone bill. Neat.

-Dipayan Baishya

DASH BOARD

A+
Call them India's Energy Trio. Indian Oil Corporation has become the third most valuable company in the country after ONGC and Reliance. On Monday, August 11, its market capitalisation on BSE was Rs 41,499.75 crore; former #3 HLL's was Rs 37,717.56 crore. That earns an A+ for CMD M.S. Ramachandran.

D
Another energy company is in the news and for all the wrong reasons. After an ONGC chopper crashed into the Arabian Sea killing 27, employees took Chairman and Managing Director Subir Raha to task, alleging that he had ignored their repeated requests to look into the safety of the choppers the company used.