Tata Group Defers Plan to Set Up Rural BPO !

The famous TATA group has decided to defer its plan of setting up a rural business process outsourcing( BPO) unit near the proposed steel plant at Kalinganagar in Orissa by two years. The reason being the infrastructure for the center is not yet ready and the construction was hindered by an agitation by the locals. The locals protested the development of the six million-tonne greenfield steel project in the Jajpur district of Orissa.

According to a senior official the company is now planning to start a rural BPO in its own traditional bastion Jamshedpur. It has plans to replicate the model in Orissa and in couple of other areas. The company has already identified a school building for the proposed site in the Sakchi area of the steel city which is owned by the Tata group.

After the completion of the project and once the center becomes operational the 250 run seater will run in four shifts. The project aims to provide employment to 1,000 rural youth from Jharkhand as said by an official.

The company official also added that they had plans to open this rural BPO in Jamshedpur as a template which would be operational by the end of this year. Once the center is operational, the company aims to start similar centers in Orissa which might take eighteen months after the first center. There are plans to open 3-4 such centers.


The Tata group has already identified Kalinganagar in Orissa as the one of the location to open a rural BPO in Jharkhand. The exact location is yet to be finalized. The company is planning to open one more rural BPO center in Orissa.

Last year in May, Tata steel had planned to establish rural BPO center in Kalinganagar which aimed at providing employment to the local educated youth. The locals agitated against the displacement and loss of livelihood by the company's mega steel plant in the Jajpur district.

The center was supposed to be established by Tata Business Support Services( TBSS), which is the BPO wing of the Tata sons. This is in partnership with the Tata Steel Rural Development Society, a corporate NGO managed and controlled by the Tata group.

The company had even started recruiting locals for the center and had sent few of them for training to TBSS headquartered in Hyderabad. According to sources the new recruits have been placed in Hyderabad. Presently, they have been trained to handle Tata Teleservices’ customer support in Orissa.