BUSINESS TODAY

Bureaucrats are risk averse. Risk averse, risk averse, risk averse. But then, everyone in Indian Bureaucracy is not a bureaucrat. Most are bright people. Several have spied a corporate world opportunity in influence peddling. Some are actual businessmen within. A few have had the guts to do something about it. It's the few, the guys with confidence, intellect and daring-do, who are most interesting.

J.A. Chowdary was once a technocrat from the Department Of Electronics (doe), 1985 batch, involved in I&T Ministry projects such as the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), for which he oversaw work in both Chennai and Bangalore. "Great initiatives came from my pen," he boasts, in recollection. But he yearned for a bigger challenge-in the form of a more active role in what his pen had intended. So in 1996, Chowdary left STPI to start PortalPlayer, and put "teachings into practice". Now called Pinexe Systems, his company designs integrated chips. "We are able to supply chips to major CE companies," he beams, pleased with how the venture has shaped up.

Yet, Chowdary won't forget the fear of the unknown that lurked in 1996, when he abandoned the cosy comfort of bureaucratic power to wager his future on a start-up idea. Success hasn't been easy, though. Pitfalls came in the guise of "investors running away during the September 11 problems", but the risk was well worth it. Today, Chowdary earns more, influences business more and gets more time with his family. But he still holds the Bureaucracy in high regard, clear that it has potential to do much good.

For all the power, a bureaucrat is not his own boss. As chief of B2K, an analytics BPO outfit based in Bangalore, Karnataka's former it secretary Vivek Kulkarni is very much his own man. In 2003, after a meeting with friend and analytics expert Madhukar Angur in the US, Kulkarni quit a 22-year career in the Civil Services of the Karnataka Cadre to get into all the BPO action he saw around him, with a new unit opening up every week.

This way, Kulkarni is free to do his own thing. "When I was a secretary in Bio-Technology," he recalls, "it was frustrating when I wanted to go on a tour and I needed permission for everything. The government still operates on redundant British colonial ideas." What he misses, though, is the fraternal spirit of the services that contrasts with the cut-throat hurly-burly of business.

By way of grounding, Kulkarni is sure glad for the experience of having played problem-solver to a third of a district at an age of just 24-an experience that helps him as CEO now. Then, there's the sheer breadth of human interactions he's had. It's another gain. His vast network of business chiefs and politicians doesn't hurt either. Business now is good, and he has even got himself into the ins and outs of golf.

Golf is the passion of another bureaucrat-turned-entrepreneur, H.R. Srinivasan, who raves about the courses of Kuala Lumpur. In 1994, when he quit the Indian Railways, he hadn't thought much about risk. He didn't want to suffer "paralysis by analysis". He just quit. He was fed up of what he saw as a place where "horses and donkeys ran the derby together", and went "job to job" in the corporate world before setting up Take Solutions in 2001.

Srinivasan is proud of having used his Railways experience to generate value from thin air, and now has a centre in Malaysia as well, offering logistical and other supply-chain solutions. For a logistics expert to craft software, he holds, is better than a software guy figuring out logistics.

For Sunil Tandon, who left the IAS in 1997, the big motivator was the need to prove his worth. Other than that there were the usual 'push' factors. "Boredom and Rs 7,000 per month were the reasons for leaving-in that order," he recounts. In 2001, Tandon started Capital Partners, which helps companies set themselves up. "The greater risk," he says today, "would have been to stay put in the bureaucracy." Starting an enterprise has been both exciting and humbling-since the buck now stops with him. Yet it is "more fulfilling than grinding files", he says, sighing at the visions of changing the world he had entertained on joining the IAS in 1983. "Over a period of time," he reflects, "the system makes brilliant people spineless."

Does Tandon regret the IAS? No. What he would not exchange for the world is the experience garnered from working in varied ministries, from finance to agriculture. And he owes the IAS his experience of working with the likes of Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Business, of course, has its own bureaucracy-as anyone who has read Lawrence M. Miller's Barbarians To Bureaucrats, or better still, worked in big corporations, will testify. This is perhaps why dumping the bureaucracy is the biggest relief to those looking for a liberal splash of colour in their lives.

Ask Rashmi Uday Singh, who quit the IRS in 1990. She was "uncomfortable with power". The tax raids she was required to conduct were "nightmarish", and she gave it up for a TV show called Health Today and authorship of a cookery book series. She also runs the Good Food Academy and has dabbled with a café called the Good Food Gallerie. Her inspiration? "Renoir," she laughs, "or one of those brilliant impressionists who was a tax collector." She also recalls "waking up one fine day and realising that Mozart was dead by the time he was my age...so what am I doing?"

It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. It may as well be you. Be a long-distance debt collector. At a call centre. You use your charm to nudge people into paying up what they owe, be it credit card bills, home loans, telephone bills or anything else. You bear with touching sob stories, or even death threats. But you also get a fraction of the debt you recover. So you could take home twice or thrice the Rs 12-15,000 salary. What do you need? "Excellent communication skills and ability to comprehend accents," says Ajay Chaturvedi, Assistant Vice President, Business Development, Global Vantedge, a Gurgaon-based BPO that specialises in delinq-uency management.

I work for a small search firm that specialises in recruiting people for high-profile jobs, such as CEOs. My colleagues and I are facing a problem-the high-handedness of my immediate boss. He shares a good rapport with our chairman, and has managed to bag a couple of out-of-turn promotions over the last two years. Now he behaves like he owns us, giving us verbal lashings. His behaviour unnerves us all in office. Should we take legal action?

Abusive behaviour is something you'll have trouble proving in a court of law. Before you take this drastic step, you should first find out if you are the only one facing this problem, or it's a collective complaint. If it is, and you feel your immediate boss is not likely to be open to criticism, then you should seek an audience with your chairman. If your chairman feels you've got an acceptable grievance, the matter may get sorted out without messy interventions from a court. Besides, characters like your immediate boss are not uncommon in the workplace, and are usually put in place by deeds of their own making.

I am a manager with a reputed call centre in Delhi. The work hours are pretty exhausting here, and I'm feeling a bit jaded. I would like to take some time off and refresh my energies by indulging in some of hobbies, such as travelling and photography. The problem is that my company is expanding, and getting leave is out of the question. I'm also unsure about quitting, since it may be difficult to get another job, particularly considering the good pay package I get here. What should I do?

I'm sure it's not as bad as you are making it out to be. You don't really need a long vacation to recharge your batteries. If anything, that may just make you a little complacent. What you actually need is a small break, which can be truly rejuvenating. You can even take a weekend or two off and go somewhere close by. That way, you may even be able to reach there by car, and the long drive itself will refresh your mind and your faculties. Once you reach there, you can indulge your favourite hobby-photography. There are plenty of places around Delhi where you can choose to go.

I work for a software multinational giant as Vice President, Marketing. The organisation I work for has merged globally with another software giant, and it took almost a year for the companies to synergise their operations. This has, however, created a piquant situation for me. In the new entity, I have to share my position with three others. That job, too, I managed to retain only after a fresh round of interviews. I'm finding it difficult to cope emotionally. Is this a matrix organisation, flat structure, or what?

Well, the fundamental fact is that you still have a job. And more than anything else, that should calm you down emotionally. Imagine if you had to face a layoff-common enough in merger scenarios; surely that wouldn't have been emotionally uplifting for you. As for the structure, it appears that the organisation could not make up its mind about the abilities of the people competing for the post, and decided to retain all. The other thing could be that the merged entity is big enough to require more than one vice president for marketing. Whatever the reason, you still have a job, and that's the happy bottomline for you.

I am an equity research analyst with a fund manager in India. I want to grow professionally, and so am considering moving to the United States. However, I have a limited budget and not much idea on how to go about it. How do I conduct a reasonable job search for people of my profile in the US? Do you think it would be right for me to take a three-week holiday from my work? Please advise.

Taking a longish break from work to look for another job is never a good idea. Besides, the US employment market has slowed down in recent times. Also, after 9/11, security concerns have resulted in policy changes, which make it all the more difficult to get a job there quickly. If you have good contacts, or a brilliant academic and professional track record, it's worth a try. Otherwise, the best option for you would be to work for a US-based multinational, if you're not working in one already, and request a transfer to the US. If none of this works, wait for the work environment in the US to get better, and then make your move.

Answers to your career concerns are contributed by Tarun Sheth (Senior Consultant) and Shilpa Sheth (Managing Partner, US practice) of HR firm, Shilputsi Consultants. Write to Help,Tarun! c/o Business Today, Videocon Tower, Fifth Floor, E-1, Jhandewalan Extn., New Delhi-110055.

Got a pretty face? You're on. That's how it is in the audio-visual game. But if you twist your earlobes forth and focus your gaze, you'll get a lot more. And a potentially big-bucks job behind-the-camera or in the studio. Post-production work that was going overseas is increasingly being done in Indian studios. Foreign crews are floating around too. Oliver Stone, for one, wants to shoot Alexander in Punjab, which would spell some 100 jobs with salaries ranging from Rs 5,000 to over Rs 50,000 per week.

Then there's the TV boom. Needed: editors, cinematographers and sound engineers. "The average serial requires 75 to 80 people," says Sameer Nair, COO, Star TV India, "And as quality increases, more people will get employed at higher levels." A rookie 'assistant producer' starting on Rs 10,000 per month could draw three to five times that figure in just three years. What's most needed, says Sunil Lulla, Executive Vice President, Sony Entertainment Television, is ideation skills. And despite so many people wanting to join, says Anita Kaul Basu of Synergy Communications, "There is still a problem in getting good people-it is still a matter of chance."

-Kushan Mitra

Serious Skill Polishing
Coaching institutes or finishing schools?

Cashing in: BPO schools have sprouted all over India

It had to happen, and it did. Finishing schools are sprouting up to help aspirants get BPO jobs. Akiko Callnet, Hero Mindmine, North Star, Convergeon and Planetworkz are some of the better-known ones across the country. And it's not just about getting the language straight, as these call centre training schools insist. It's also about-ahem-accent 'neutralisation', culture sensitisation, computer usage and soft skills.

The training modules, which last from a month to a quarter, typically cost between Rs 10,000 and 16,000, and bank on the logic that many call centres prefer pre-trained manpower, "by which they save considerably on the inhouse training costs and time", in the words of Vikas Sharma, coo, Akiko Callnet.

So do the pre-trained have an advantage? Not necessarily, feels Joby Joseph, Vice President, Training, EXL Services, who attributes the success of these institutes to the throngs of applicants who need serious skill-polishing. Besides, wouldn't the best BPOs insist on training their agents their own special way?

-Supriya Shrinate