PPO after BPO & KPO...????

PPO is emerging trend in the economy after the BPO and KPO. IT giants like IBM, Infosys, Wipro and WNS - providing offshore services from India to clients in the developed part of the world - have got a new rival on the fast expanding BPO landscape. More importantly, the new challenger is not some thousand-employees strong Business Process Outsourcing firm, but individuals who could be sitting anywhere alone before their personal computer, but have before them an addressable market worth over 20 billion dollars in the US alone.

While outsourcing of services by medium and large-size companies from the US and Europe to low-cost countries like India has been going on for a decade now, the new trend in this space to watch out for is Person-to-Person Offshoring (PPO), says global research and analytics firm Evalueserve.


PPO consists of services that can be off shored to individual professionals by entrepreneurs seeking to bootstrap their business and can be utilised by anyone with the technology advances and growth of Internet in today's world.

All a professional requires to render these services is a PC and a reliable Internet connection. While each PPO contract is often of low value usually between $100 and $5,000 (Rs 4,000 to Rs 20,000) but due to the large number of end consumers involved, the total addressable market in the US alone has exceeded $20 billion, Evalueserve Chairman Alok Aggarwal said.

To make the things easier, there are already close to 100 websites such as Guru.com, Elance.com, RentACoder.com and GetAFreelancer.com acting as trading platforms for such services and over ten lakh professionals -- a majority of who are from India -- are already registered on these sites as PPO providers.

Guru follows a "closed auction" bidding and also provides a "SafePay Escrow" account that protects the interests of both the client and the vendor during the execution of the project.

California-based Elance.com has approximately 80,000 registered vendors and free-lance professionals, of which about 50 per cent are from low-wage countries. RentACoder.com, a Florida based marketplace, has over 175,000 registered freelancers and is focussed on IT sector.

Another such marketplace, GetAFreelancer.com has mostly IT programmers from low-wage countries as its registered freelancers. Here, the buyers decide between closed or open bidding, while it also provides a payment escrow service.

One of the fastest growing segment in the PPO market is editorial and writing services, which include writing for books, copy writing, editing, proof-reading, news articles, newsletters, press releases, translation and web content.

These tasks do not require expensive infrastructure and people can work from their homes with a broadband connection and earn between 10 and 25 dollars for an hour's work. Among other popular PPO services being offered currently, jobs like online tutoring fetch 8-40 dollar an hour.

Courtesy: Economic Times

GSM Subscribers Touched 12.55Cr

Sustaining its aggressive growth in subscriber additions, the GSM-based cellular industry has added over 41 lakh subscribers in April with Bharti Airtel capturing 30.97 per cent of the market share.

With this, the all-India GSM subscriber base has touched 12.55 crore at the end of April 2007 compared to 12.14 crore at the end of March 2007, reflecting a growth rate of 3.40 per cent, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said in a statement.

CDMA mobile figures are yet to be out.

In April, the cellular subscriber base of Bharti touched 3.88 crore with additions of 17.51 lakh users, followed by BSNL at 2.77 crore with a market share of 22.10 per cent and additions of 3.26 lakh subscribers.

Hutch-Essar has 2.77 crore subscribers, taking its market share to 22.06 per cent and Idea with a market share of 11.60 per cent has 1.45 crore subscribers in April.

Hutch-Essar added 12.61 lakh subscribers in the month of April, while Idea added 5.52 lakh mobile users in the same month.

MTNL's GSM subscriber base in Delhi and Mumbai touched 24.83 lakh, while Spice Telecom has over 28 lakh subscribers.

Aircel's user base in April stood at 59.27 lakh, followed by Reliance Telecom's 43.47 lakh subscribers

Car Export Falls 9.5%

India's quest to become a global hub for small car manufacturing began on a wrong note this fiscal with passenger car exports during the first month of the year declining by almost 9.5 per cent.

According to figures released by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), passenger car exports from the country stood at 14,021 units compared to 15,497 units in the same month of previous fiscal.

While country's biggest carmakers, Maruti Udyog Ltd (MUL) and Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) gained exports volume, Tata Motors witnessed a dip in its overseas sales during the month.

HMIL maintained its position as the biggest car exporter from India with 11,341 units, up 4.6 per cent from the same month last year. MUL's exports during the month grew by 11.43 per cent at 1,667 units. Tata Motors overseas sales, however, declined by 11.38 per cent in April at 1,012 units compared to 1,142 units in the same month last year.

On the two-wheelers front, motorcycles fuelled the sales growth trend in overseas market while scooter exports continued to dip during the month.

Reliance Farm Fresh

The Indian retail market accounted for $ 200 billions. Food accounts for over two-thirds of the $200-billion Indian retail market. Yet, it has seen less than 1 per cent penetration by modern retail so far.
Reliance industries which always looking for new business opportunities just started a new era with its introduction of new concept stores named Reliance Fresh with opening convince store in high streets of Banjara hills of Hyderabad. Reliance Fresh is very different from what modern retail has offered in India so far and with this reliance is planning to establish strong retail network in India in food and farm sector. They have started with new eleven stores in the last week and they are thinking to add 100 more stores to their feather by the end of this year.

Let’s do a SWOT analysis on the Reliance Fresh.

Strengths:

Reliance is the first into enter into this unorganized sector of vegetables and fruits. According to them its intentions to have100% farm fresh foods in their new retail stores. It is also adding shortly a juice bar, and even a large counter for puja flowers. In fact, over 60 per cent of the floor space has been dedicated to fresh fruits and vegetables, the rest to other food products like staples, spices, bakery, etc. But reliance has decided not to add any bar soap or toothpaste and detergent in its shelves. So by using this strategy they are positioning themselves different from other players of the industries like Food world, Big Bazaar and Nilgiris. But over come the short comings of these specialized stores they are also introducing new Reliance full-fledged supermarket called Shakhari Bhandar which offers each and everything from the staple to soap. Most of the staples are under its own private label brand — ‘Reliance Select’. There is a 500g channa dal pack priced at Rs 28, a 500g urad dal pack for Rs 39, all under Reliance’s own brand. Excepting a few packets of Nestle’s Maggi, or MTR’s masalas or Pepsi’s Lays chips, there is very little shelf space given to the big brand owners in the country. Reason: private labels offer far better profit margin to the retailer than branded products of FMCG companies. Most of these outlets will need only 2,000-5,000 sq. ft. A supermarket may need as much as 8,000-10,000 sq. ft.

Weakness:

This is definitely an interesting business venture but it may miss out on the opportunity to capture a greater share of the customer’s wallet. For customers, too, this could be irksome, as they would have to visit another store to pick up essentials. Reliance could easily fix this problem by adding a few small counters for some basic non-food products. According to their official this format is not final one they are accepting the new changes which are required to attract the large number of customers.

Opportunities

Reliance wants to build a high-profitability business and food is, perhaps, the best venture to start. That is because the Indian food supply chain is grossly inefficient. There are several intermediaries, each of whom adds his own profit margin to the cost. Besides, there is huge wastage in transit. This offers potential for savings and profits. To reduce the cost and increase the profit it has been sourcing out its requirements from the farmers. For example, the leafy vegetables, brinjals, tomatoes and green chilies in the Banjara Hills outlet were sourced directly from farmers in Vantimamdi, Chevella and nearby mandals in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh. The supply chain already has been backed by few hundred farmers the number is estimated to touch million in next five years. The main aim of the reliance is to eliminate the intermediaries in the sector and reduce the cost. Smaller stores have two advantages. They bring down the cost of real estate (and increase profits). It is easier to find space for small convenience stores in a quiet neighborhood than for supermarkets in high streets.

Threats:

This model is engineered to clock a faster turnover of inventory — Reliance expects consumers to visit the store at least twice a week for their top-up groceries. Each store will have an investment of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 60 lakh. Unlike global retailers who operate on thin margins, Reliance Retail is looking at a fairly high-margin business model. Deliberately stopped short of being a full-fledged supermarket rather, it has limited itself to a food and grocery convenience store. They also have a threat from the existing supermarkets which provides all the services to its customers. For Example Food world and Nilgiris also provides food and beverages with other personal care products. These convince are not existed in the present Reliance retail stores.
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Reliance Balance Sheet

Balance Sheet
Total Share Capital 1393.17
Net Worth 49804.26
Total Debt 21865.61
Net Block 55716.75
Investments 5846.18
Net Current Assets 3149.15
Total Assets 71669.87