Akshaya Bhargava – Micro CV

Akshaya joined 3i as an Operating Partner for BPO and is the Chairman of Portfolio BPO Services, a 3i established company that offers a wide range of outsourced services to the companies in 3i’s portfolio through a unique partnership with Infosys BPO, one of India’s foremost providers.

Prior to 3i, Akshaya was the founding  CEO of Progeon Ltd, the BPO subsidiary of Infosys Ltd, India’s second-largest IT services company.  During his four years as CEO, Akshaya grew Progeon from a start-up to a business with 7,000 employees that grew revenues at triple digit growth rates with industry leading margins.

Before launching Progeon, Akshaya worked for Citibank for 22 years in a variety of leadership roles.  He led transaction services businesses in India and London and was country manager for Citibank in the Czech Republic.  In his final role for Citibank, Akshaya was the Global Head of product management for the SME across 18 emerging markets countries.

What is the project you’re working on with 3i?
Akshaya: We’re creating an enterprise that will open up business process outsourcing (BPO) to all of the companies in 3i’s portfolio.  Small and medium-sized companies can benefit greatly from BPO, but the mechanics can often appear quite daunting.  Called Portfolio BPO Services – and known as PBS – the enterprise will be a window into outsourcing that will facilitate every aspect of the transaction. We have a unique partnership arrangement with Infosys BPO – one of India’s best BPO companies.  A lot of PE houses have been trying to do the same thing with their portfolio companies but I believe that 3i is a leader in making it happen.

How will 3i’s portfolio companies benefit?
Akshaya: They’ll be able to outsource a range of activities, from basic processes to high-value-added services.  Actual service will be provided by Inofsys BPO from India under an umbrella contractual arrangement with PBS. We have leveraged 3i’s collective purchasing power, so there will be significant financial and commercial benefits.  However, as with all intelligent outsourcing, cost should not be the overriding consideration.  Instead, potential users have the opportunity to transform their business.  These opportunities can be even more appealing to small and medium-sized companies than they are to larger institutions, because the impact on the entire enterprise is much quicker.

How did you first become involved with BPO?
Akshaya: I simply needed to solve a business problem. The Transaction Services business that I was running at Citibank in India was a victim of its own success – volumes grew dramatically, processing times slipped, and we actually began to lose more money the more transactions we processed. Clearly we needed to re-engineer the process but there were many constraints in a heavily-unionised environment with expensive banking compensation levels. So we thought laterally and created a captive unit to which we outsourced our entire transaction processing.  Strangely enough, our biggest hurdle was not the unions but internal sceptics. However, once we’d shown that the concept worked, the take up grew rapidly.  The facility began to serve other countries and undertake higher-value activities.  BPO was a tool I used again when I was country manager for Citibank in the Czech Republic.  Business was booming but staff availability in Prague was scarce – outsourcing the back office to India was a key factor in our ability to grow the Czech business rapidly.

You grew 7,000 person BPO business from scratch for Infosys.  How?
Akshaya: When Infosys approached me in 2002, it was clear that BPO was going to be huge in India but the focus at that time was very much on call centres.  We knew that the call centre business was quick to win but easy to lose, so I wanted to build a business that had a more durable model.  I knew from my Citibank experience that higher-value ‘back office’ business actually has a greater proportion of non voice processing work than call centres, and is also harder to move around between providers.  Therefore when I set up Progeon it focused on non voice, high-end activities.  We didn’t recruit from existing call centres.  Instead we recruited mid-career people with great track records in consultancy and financial services.  We also devised a highly-disciplined approach to winning business that reflected the long customer sales cycle.  Sales teams worked with clients in a consultative way at the ‘should I outsource?’ stage.  Product specialist teams worked with clients at the ‘what should I outsource?’ stage.  And Transition managers worked with clients at the ‘how should I outsource?’ stage.  Many of our competitors would just grab whatever business they could get but we stayed focussed on building a model built on a clear strategy.  Our strategy proved itself when we outperformed them by way of financial results. In each of my last six quarters as CEO of Progeon, we delivered an EBIT in excess of 25%.

What does it take to be a great BPO manager?
Akshaya: If you go to any successful BPO company, you’ll see plenty of people who are just very good managers.  They understand organisational processes and they improve where they can.  There’s a myth that you don’t need to worry about headcount and efficiency in India because labour is cheap.  This is wrong.  Wage inflation is strong in India and there’s a constant pressure to devise new and more effective ways of doing things.  Ultimately, good BPO management requires a disciplined, yet innovative mindset that seeks better outcomes for the client, whether it’s improved customer service or faster turnaround times.  BPO is all about not taking any short cuts and adopting a “front office” mindset to someone else’s ‘back office’.