“Tell me what is the big deal about being an entrepreneur? Why does no one talk about their team,” asks Saloni Malhotra. I explain that the vision of one person matters. “Well, you can have people working for you but do you have a team who is willing to take a pay cut when times are hard and make adjustments because they believe in the idea?” DesiCrew, a rural BPO's five-year success story is because of such a team.
Says Saloni, “I first came here in 2005, and took my time to get used to the food and other things. But my team was with me through it all. That's the only thing that has kept me going.”
With a degree in Engineering and a desire to combine three worlds — rural, technology and business, Saloni started DesiCrew Solutions when she was 23. “I'm from Delhi and was working there in an interactive agency after my graduation. I wanted to start something by myself and chanced upon a talk by Professor Jhunjhunwala of TeNet group, IIT Madras. I came here to meet him and he gave me this idea. After two years of research the rural BPO was born on February 2, 2007.”
What exactly is a rural BPO? “It's not very different except of course, the ‘rural' perspective. It's like any other BPO that functions with people in rural areas. We work with IT/ITES companies, insurance, new media and mobile-based clients. When we looked around, we saw that a lot of BPOs hire people from rural areas and realised that people have to migrate to work here. So, we decided to take the jobs to them,” she says, “We started a unit in Kollumangudi near Mayiladuthurai with four people and now we have 40-odd people working there.”
As someone who was new to the city, Saloni had to work extra hard to run her company. “I had never been to Chennai before and initially small things seemed big,” she laughs, “But DesiCrew was my topmost priority and it shadowed everything else. Language, of course, was a problem but it was overcome. There was just a madness to do this and when you get to that state, you don't think about much else.”
DesiCrew now has four rural offices — Udupi, Ammapalayam, Apakoodal and Kollumangudi and employs 300-odd people from these villages. “A rural BPO is an oxymoron,” she explains, “our biggest hurdle was to gain the client's trust. You have cities like Chennai and Bengaluru offering the same services and even they suffer from power cuts. But this is a village where none of them have been to nor do they speak the language. What is the power situation there and what will they deliver, are the main questions that clients would look at. We invested heavily on infrastructure and made sure there is no compromise. All our offices have generators, UPS and backups because the office can't shut down even for a minute.”
Saloni won the TiE Stree Shakthi Award in 2011 and DesiCrew won the Sankalp award in 2009. “I love to travel and initially I wanted to start something like DesiCrew just to have an excuse to go to remote areas and meet people,” says Saloni, “But I guess it all comes down to taking the risk. When you're 23, shifting jobs doesn't matter and for me, it was just a case of following my dream.”
Among the early start-ups in this scene, DesiCrew has been an experience of a lifetime, says Saloni, who recently stepped down as CEO of the company and will continue to be on its board. “It's been an amazing experience and an adventure. I have a lot of ideas for DesiCrew which I couldn't implement until now due to lack of time. Now I'll have the time to work on them. But I'll still tell you that being an entrepreneur has been glorified much. At the end of the day, you are only as good as your team,” she smiles.
