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Face to Face with Ajuba
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Devendra Saharia is Co-Founder and President of Ajuba. Under his leadership, Ajuba has grown from a 10 person outfit in 2000 to over 1000 employees in 2006 and is the premier BPO company in Revenue Cycle management for US healthcare providers.
Prior to co-founding Ajuba, Devendra was a technology investment banker at Robertson Stephens in San Francisco, where he focused on the Internet and software sectors. Before that, he was a Mergers & Acquisitions specialist at UBS in New York and an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Devendra received his MBA from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from Grinnell College
Q: What has been Ajuba’s growth over the years in terms of both revenue and manpower?
A: Ajuba has grown at a CAGR of over 45% in the last five years both in terms of revenue and also employee base.
Q: Ajuba has a well accomplished talent base in the industry. As a medium sized player, how do you manage to attract and retain such a talent base?
A: Here are some ways we have been able to develop a strong talent base in our organization.
Pioneering people practices, as demonstrated by recent awards:
- Ajuba was ranked the third best BPO employer in India by IDC – Dataquest in 2005.
- Ajuba was ranked among the top 25 companies (across industries) in India by the Great Places to Work Institute Inc. (US) in 2005.
Compensation and Benefits:
- Best-in-class compensation (top quartile of the industry), including attractive performance bonuses
- Other benefits such as transportation and dinner
Professional and career development:
- Continuous learning opportunities and sponsorships to domain-relevant certifications
- A suite of in-house training programmes, including leadership and management development programmes. Ajuba’s training programme was ranked the top among BPO companies in the 2005 IDC-Dataquest survey.
- Fast-track career path for top performers
- Performance management system based on clear definition of Key Result Areas (tied to client SLAs), periodic monitoring and counseling and robust performance evaluation process
- On-site (US) assignments
Work Culture:
- Young, vibrant and caring work environment
- Respect for people
- Complete meritocracy, whether it is in recruitment or in promotions
Q: Being part of the ITeS ecosystem, what trends do you witness in this space? What future trends do you see happening in this space?
- Scale of operations is becoming bigger. Smaller players or those in niche areas are being acquired by bigger ones. We are also seeing a consolidation of players based on complementary business models. We expect these trends to continue.
- Captive units created by companies which had previously outsourced to third parties
- Move from commoditised services to higher value added services
- Move from voice to transaction/rule/knowledge based processes
- With the emergence of other low-cost destinations such as China, Philippines, Mexico etc., companies which are able to establish Global Delivery Models will see bigger success and growth as opposed to those whose delivery models are purely India-centric.
- Development of tier 2 and tier 3 cities
Q: Ajuba has a strong international clientele; the domestic market has been unexplored? Any reason why?
A: Ajuba is in a niche area of providing revenue cycle outsourcing services for healthcare providers and collection agencies in the US and UK. Unlike in India, the healthcare system in the US is a cashless system with every citizen being covered under either federal or commercial insurance. This creates a revenue cycle whereby every healthcare service provider raises claims on insurers and follows them up for collections. There is no similar domestic market in India. Furthermore, Ajuba already optimally utilizes its infrastructure over more than two shifts. There is therefore no spare capacity to take on domestic business.
Q: ITeS space is facing a mid-life crisis. Do you agree? What according to you are the challanges the industry is facing? What do you think is the solution/ strategy to overcome this bottleneck?
Sl. No. | Challanges | Possible Solutions |
1 | Skill shortages:
- Although on paper, there are thousands of graduates and other resources, the quality of employability is rather poor
- Shortage of resources is specially acute for certain processes such as voice-based processes
- This results in severe competition for the limited, employable pool of people posing challanges in both attracting and retaining talent
| - Industry-academia partnership is required on a large scale to improve the skill sets of graduates and to make them more employable
- More number of qualitative training institutes and trainers are required to improve the employability and quality of available resources
- Tap talent pool in tier 2 and 3 cities
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2 | Rate of increase in compensation levels – this is a direct result of skill shortages | - Move to a fixed + variable compensation structure, with the variable component tied in to achieving agreed business goals
- De-skill and automate processes wherever possible so as to reduce dependencies on specific resources
- Improve productivity in order to offset increases in compensation
- Develop tier 2 and 3 cities, where compensation levels are lower
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3 | Leadership shortages: As the ITeS industry expands rapidly adding new processes; it has created a huge need for leadership resources, especially at the entry (Team Leader) level. While the industry is doing reasonably well in coping with this requirement, there are many areas that need addressing:
- Availability of adequate number of trainers with the ability to coach / mentor these leaders
- Lack of widespread usage of standardized tools to measure / evaluate the leadership capabilities and the competency gaps
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Companies should have good processes to identify people with leadership potential. They should then work on many fronts to create and nurture leadership talent:
- Run leadership and management development programmes
- Create faster career tracks for high potential leaders
- Create appropriate performance management framework that brings out the best in the leaders
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4 | Pricing pressures – Companies are seeing increasing pricing pressures, especially in lower-end, commoditised processes. Furthermore, customers are now aware of the offshore cost bases and look for the best bargains, thereby pushing down price points. | - Look for differentiated, non-commoditised processes
- Move up the value chain, thereby increasing the mix of higher-end, higher-priced processes.
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Q: Work done by the company has been recognized by national and international agencies, how has this acted as a catalyst in terms of growth of Ajuba?
A: The awards that the Company has won have significantly improved our brand equity with all stake-holders – whether it is vendors, customers, employees or shareholders. For example, our ranking among the top global outsourcing companies has helped us in attracting prospective clients while the awards for our people practices have helped us in attracting and retaining top-draw talent.
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Updated on:
16 Nov, 2006
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