Aegis, part of the $35-billion Essar Group, is said to have bagged a ₹450-crore deal to provide back-office services for the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s (BSNL) broadband and landline operations.

As part of the five-year deal, Aegis will provide customer relationship management, billing and other services to the telecom operator’s subscribers across the country. Aegis will cater to both incoming and outbound calls and be responsible for resolution of the faults booked, officials told BusinessLine .

Disputed move

“The contract was signed in the middle of last year, while the actual work began in December. The BPO company will operate two new contact centres which will support BSNL operations on a pan-India basis,” one of the officials said. A spokesperson for Aegis did not respond to a BusinessLine query. BSNL officials have confirmed the development, adding that the move to engage Aegis has been contested by some sections of the company. In fact, the BSNL Employees Union has written to the telco’s top management to reconsider the decision to outsource. The union has alleged that the management’s decision to engage Aegis was taken arbitrarily without consulting the recognised unions. “The BSNL management has been stating that outsourcing is being conducted because there is shortage of associates. However, in places such as Chennai, we have surplus staffers and we see this as a wasteful expenditure,” said P Abhimanyu, Secretary General of BSNL’s Employee Union.

Loss for the year

“There are many instances where the outside agencies totally failed in providing a satisfactory service to the customers and we do not want a repeat of the same,” said Abhimanyu. As on September 30, 2014, BSNL had incurred a loss of ₹3,785 crore for the current financial year.

Aegis has been ramping up its delivery infrastructure in the last few months.

This year alone, the company will erect seven new centres in Ajmer (Rajasthan), Karnal (Haryana), Shivamogga (Karnataka), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Dehradun (Uttaranchal) and Guwahati (Assam). Aegis sees telecom and financial services as the bright spots for its business this year. It will add 11,000 new staffers this year.

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