The Hindu Business Line : Biggies line up for Railways call centres

Terms of call
Bidding on the basis of highest fee/lowest viability gap funding.
Project completion required within 5 months.
Penalty of Rs 1 lakh per week for delays.

New Delhi , Aug. 25

Biggies from the IT and telecom industry, including Airtel, BSNL, Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, HP, Wipro and IBM, are eyeing the Indian Railways call centre operations, which would be outsourced.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which is entrusted with the job, had invited tenders from consortia, including a telecom firm with pan-Indian operations and business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, to set up and operate Railways' call centres.

The call centre would have to provide basic train enquiry services at the cost of a local call for passengers calling from anywhere in the country. But it can have premium pricing for value-added services such as hotel booking.

About 25 firms have bought the tender document, said sources. They include telecom majors such as Airtel, BSNL, Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices. Players from the IT/BPO sector who have evinced interest include Avaya Global Connect, CMC, HP, IBM, Wipro, MphasiS BFL, HCL Comnet, HCL Infosys, Spanco Telesystems and Intelenet Global Services. Moreover, there are companies such as Jupiter Strategic Technologies, Pagepoint Services, CS Infocomm, Stracon, Matrix Processing House, Cranium Information Technology and IMI Software.

Bidding process

The consortium, which is required to establish, operate and maintain the call centres at North, East, West and South zones, would have to specify the licence fee it would pay to Railways or the viability gap grant it would need from Railways to operate the centre. The bidder quoting the highest licence fee or minimum viability grant would be awarded the contract.

The successful bidder would have to provide a performance guarantee of Rs 1 crore valid for about 10 years. The project would have to be completed within five months of the contract being awarded. For subsequent delays, firms would have to pay a penalty of Rs 1 lakh a week.

Railways receives about 14-15 lakh phone calls a day for various queries; it generates substantial revenues for the telecom firm in whose network the enquiry number resides, as it gets the termination charges.