The Hindu Business Line : Race narrows for Rlys' call centres

Domestic and multinational majors, including Avaya Global Connect, BSNL, CMC, IBM and Tata Teleservices, are in the race to get a share in the pie of Railways' call centre operations. The race has now narrowed down with three consortia submitting their bids.

Over 25 companies, including Airtel, Reliance Info, HP and Wipro, had bought bid documents for establishing and operating the call centres, that would have to provide basic train enquiry services at the cost of a local call for people calling from anywhere in the country. But the operator is allowed to have premium charges for value-added services such as hotel and taxi-booking services.

BIDDERS

One of the consortia is led by Midas Communications, Avaya and IBM. It includes Magus Customer, Lettice Bridge, Railtel and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) as well. The second includes Spanco Telesystems and BSNL. CMC, with Tata Teleservices, Avaya and E2E Serwizsol Solutions Ltd form the third consortium.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) had invited tenders from consortia to set up and operate the centres. Each consortium was required to include a telecom firm with pan-Indian operations and business process outsourcing (BPO) firm.

"The technical evaluations are going on right now. Financial bids of the technically qualified bidders would be opened later," said sources.

Each bidder was to specify the licence fee he would pay to Railways or the viability gap grant he would need from Railways to operate the centres. The bidder quoting the highest licence fee or minimum viability grant would be awarded the contract.