The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

Bangalore, April 19, 2011 -- "DYR. What does dyr mean?" the teacher asks.

"Expensive," replies Veerna Krishna-Murthy, a smartly dressed woman in a green sari. "Superbrah. Well done."

Here in the heartland of India’s outsourcing industry, business is brisk at the city’s language schools. While Swedish might not seem the obvious language of choice for Indian professionals, with foreign companies shifting more and more of their operations overseas, demand for such niche skills is booming.

"There are many IT companies here who are doing business with Scandinavia, so they need employees with the right skills," said Christina Melathil, who set up the Nordic Talks language school last year to tap into the trend. "Many of these languages have not really been on the map here before, but it’s definitely a big growth area. We are seeing a lot of interest."

In Bangalore’s competitive job market, command of English is taken for granted. These days increasingly it is the ability to speak another foreign language — German, French, Japanese or Swedish — that can be the key to a better job.

"It’s becoming more and more important," said MR Ravi, 31, a software engineer studying at the Japanese Language School, where teachers say that student numbers have swelled by 40 per cent in the past year. "I am working for a Japanese client. There is no way I could do that without the language."

At the sprawling campus of Wipro, where more than 20,000 people work, a shift is taking place. In Bangalore, thousands of call centre staff still work through the night to service the vast American market — but Wipro, one of India’s technology companies, is also investing heavily in boosting its employees’ skills in other languages. It recently launched a Japanese immersion program in Madras and it employs nearly 1,000 Japanese-speakers out of a global workforce of 120,000.

A fierce battle is under way to win contracts from companies from Sao Paulo to Helsinki, Yokohama to Madrid, which often are outsourcing back office and call centre activities for the first time. Companies such as Wipro realize that languages are the key to securing these deals and are making sure their staff are trained to help them to win new business.

Nearly 70 per cent of India’s outsourcing work is still being done for American and British companies, but the rest of the world is catching up fast. "These are the markets where there is a lot of potential," one Wipro executive said. "Germany and Japan spend a huge amount on IT but less than two per cent of that is outsourced to India — compared to over five per cent for the U.S."

Wipro and rivals such as Infosys are also looking for new ways to service non-English-speaking markets abroad. Much of Wipro’s call centre business for Japan is being handled out of Chengdu, southwest China, because Chinese-speakers find it easier to learn the language. A similar project is under way in Romania, where it is easier to find French and Italian-speaking staff, Dirk Lewis, a Wipro spokesman, said.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.ottawacitizen.com

About Wipro BPO Solution Ltd.:
Wipro Technologies is the global IT services business of Wipro Limited. Wipro delivers technology solutions to 18 countries, across four continents.