'LPOs can absorb thousands of young grads'

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) is tipped to be the next big thing in outsourcing with the industry slated to grow to US $640 million by 2011 (source: Valuenotes). India will have a large share of this pie, and hence it opens up multiple career opportunities for young graduates and professionals in India.

"LPOs are seen as a more stable career option than opportunities in the mainstream IT and ITeS (IT enabled services) sector. Unlike other segments in outsourcing, the LPO segment has seen a robust growth even during recessionary times, thus providing a stable career option," says Lokendra Tomar, chief operating officer, Asia-Pacific, Integreon, the largest player in the space of integrated knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services, both in terms of revenues and headcount.

Interestingly, this segment would be employing lawyers, MBAs, law graduates and even freshers. The work on offer includes drafting and reviewing contracts, contract summarisation among others.

Lokendra, in a telephonic interview with Prasanna D Zore spoke about Integreon's hiring plans, the emergence of LPOs as a sunrise sector that has the potential to absorb thousands of young graduates and the future of this sector in India.

About Integreon

Integreon provides a range of high-end KPO services to its clients and those services are in three to four different areas.

The services include research KPO services, document KPO services, legal KPO services and business services. Legal KPOs are also known in the market place as LPOs. Our clients include law firms and investment banks.

Integreon's employee strength India

In India we are close to about 1,200 people in two locations Mumbai (two offices) and Gurgaon (one office).

Your expansion plans in calendar year 2009?

Globally we are planning to add roughly 500 to 600 people. Two-thirds (350-400) of these employees will be hired from India. A large part of these employees will be freshers whom we will train as per the needs of the company.

Your recruitment plans

For hiring freshers, we have our campus recruitment drives in Bombay University and Pune as two of our delivery centres are in Mumbai. We recruit from tier II management institutes. We don't go to IIMs because our requirement-specs don't match theirs as far as hiring resources for technical processes are concerned.

We recruit experienced people with IIM backgrounds only for top management. Employee referrals, too, play a very significant role in our hiring plans.

The company has been hiring from campuses as well as experienced professionals from the industry. Owing to effective training mechanism, timely job rotation and good learning, Integreon has been able to attract and retain talent.

The KPO and the LPO industry is a high growth industry and normally people joining these two industries are likely to have a good career growth because the industry is growing very fast. This is one of the biggest attractions that draw a lot of fresh and experienced talent to this industry.

Because this industry has global clients, employees get exposure to global best practices, global work ethics without having to move out of India. The training part helps them to hone new skill sets, which prepare them even for any sector outside the industry in case they decide to shift base. Also we allow job rotation amongst roles, which further hones their skills.

What kind of employees can the KPO and LPO industry absorb in India?

Both these industries are growing rapidly and should be in a position to absorb hundreds of thousands of young people. This is an estimate and we would not be able to share any exact figures.

Who can make it to the KPOs and LPOs?

The work that we provide to our client is high-end which means we need to have employees with great technical skills. For our research domain we recruit MBAs; we also recruit graduates and train them in-house (we call it Integreon Training University) for specific client functions.

Then we recruit qualified lawyers some with experience and some freshers. All our employees are put through a special training course before we put them on a given process.

There would not be many companies in the industry greater than US $10 million. Only large players like Integreon have a global delivery capability and reach. We have delivery centres in locations worldwide. Three years back we had our delivery centre only in India. Now we have our delivery centres in the US, UK and the Phillipines apart from Mumbai.

The deal size over the years too has increased tremendously. Recently we signed a US $75 million deal with a law firm Osborne-Clarke and another US $10 million deal with an investment bank, which has outsourced 100 per cent of their research work to Integreon.

How has the economic slowdown affected KPOs and LPOs?

Yes, I think it has affected everybody. It has affected Integreon in both a positive and negative manner. The negative is that some of our clients overseas have gone bankrupt and we have seen reduction in their businesses.

Positive is our clients are willing to outsource even more than they earlier did in their efforts to cut costs and because of the confidence they have developed in us to outsource more confidential work. As mentioned, we have recently large deals both with an investment bank and a law firm.

Your advice to freshers wanting to make a career in this industry...

Since this industry caters to a very high-end technological segment it helps to get things right at the very first time. High attention to details is a very important requirement. Willingness to work to very high standards and adaptability to learn new skill sets during training. An open mind that adapts quickly is always an advantage.

When will recruitment start in Integreon for your Mumbai and Gurgaon centres?

There are no specific dates from which we start our recruitment process. We hire based on our client requirements.