They Brought the World to India

The Backroom Brigade: How a Few Intrepid Entrepreneurs Brought the World to India

by Seetha can provide you a blow-by-blow account of what and who made the backoffice and customer care jobs relocate to India PRAGATI VERMA Financial Express : Sunday, July 16, 2006

The story takes off from the time when American Express comptroller visited India, suspecting the lower cost of operations in India to be an accounting mistake and how the American banking major eventually decided to locate the Asia Pacific finance function to India. It is definitely not a how-to book that will take you through the process of outsourcing but offers a comprehensive understanding of how it all started and provides insights into what went behind the scenes. Written in a chatty style, it is full of colourful anecdotes from the back-office pioneers even as it takes a close and analytical look at the BPO boom.

The story comes to you in bits and pieces, straight from the likes of Raman Roy, who pioneered the concept at Amex and GECIS before venturing out on his own; Sanjeev Aggarwal, Pavan Vaish and M J Arvind, who promoted Daksh and sold it to IBM later, and Vikram Talwar of EXL. You can catch the entire drama on how Citibank missed out on being the first to kick off the boom. Her access to the people and thus situations has not only helped her paint the BPO landscape accurately but also narrate the story of evolution. Research and detail in the book are especially intriguing as it was done in the year of backlash and US presidential election when the walls of stony silence were a norm in the offshoring world.

It’s just like Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, The Backroom Brigade that narrates the story of the forces behind the revolution and lets the readers into meetings with industry leaders. Seetha is a Delhi-based economic journalist and the book is typical of a journalist's down-to-earth and chatty style and full of anecdotes.