After our 6 hour journey, we finally arrive at our destination. We all got out of the car to find that we were in Yemmiganur a small village in Andhra Pradesh. Looking at the link to Wikipedia concerning Yemmiganur, you will see that the population is about 95,000 which, in India, constitutes a small village.
Yemmiganur is one of the major towns in the Kurnool district.
It was part of the Vijayanagar from the 14th century to the 16th century. From 1953 to 1956 it was an Andhra state, now in part of Andhra Pradesh.
In 1965 the Panchayat of Yemiganur was upgraded to a Municipality. Now it is a Grade -I Municipality. It is a city at present.
As of 2011 Census of India, the town had a population of 95,149. The total population constitute, 47,456 males, 47,693 females and 12,177 children, in the age group of 0–6 years.
The average literacy rate stands at 62.98% with 52,254 literates, significantly lower than the national average of 73.00%
At our destination, the procedure that we encountered at the spring factory in Anantapur was repeated. The gate was opened at our arrival and everyone from inside came out to greet us.
My good friend from the USA, Ron, told me that this was the purpose of our trip to this village. There was the possibility that the company he worked for in Burlington, VT would send some work to this BPO.
I learned then, and you are learning now (if you didn’t already know), that BPO stands for “Business Process Outsourcing”. Like most people, I knew that companies from America and other places often sent work abroad to be accomplished. The usual reason for this is that the work could be processed at a lesser cost than it could be in the country where the company was located. A secondary reason is that this “outsourcing” or “global sourcing” provides employment for those who desperately need it in order to survive.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the contracting of non-primary business activities and functions to a third-party provider. BPO services include payroll, human resources (HR), accounting and customer/call center relations.
BPO is also known as information technology enabled services (ITES).
And this BPO had a name: IndiVillage .
IndiVillage is an enterprise of Mr. M and his family.
We had a really great welcome and then we returned to the car one last time to travel to the ancestral home of Mr. M where there were more fascinating surprises in store for us.