This deal, considered to be one of the largest for Indian BPO industry, has the blessings of UK Prime Minister Theresa May
As the Indian IT industry braces for growing resistance to outsourcing following the election of Donald Trump as US president, Sanjiv Goenka has found an ally in Britain.
Goenka's BPO firm Firstsource Solutions wouldn't be replacing Sky's 1,200 UK staff in March but would absorb them in its payroll, as part of a 10-year contract, to fulfil Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) under UK labour laws. This deal, considered to be one of the largest for Indian BPO industry, has the blessings of UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
"UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson welcomed the deal as did Prime Minister Theresa May. In fact, she had keenly inquired about it when she was in India in November," said Sanjiv Goenka, chairman RP-Sanjiv Goenka group and Firstsource Solutions.
TUPE later amended by the Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 applies to organisations of all sizes and protect employees' rights when outfits they work for transfers to a new entity.
The regulations aim to ensure that employees are not dismissed before or after the transfer and their conditions of contracts are not worsened.
Firstsource has been working with £11 billion Sky, a leading television and broadband entertainment company serving 20 million customers, since 2001 as one of its outsourced customer services providers.
But now the deal valued at Rs 12,000 crore makes Firstsource its single vendor in customer service under which 300 people based in Warrington were transferred to the UK arm of the Indian company in September and the rest 900 based in Derby would join in on March 1.
"It's the largest contract Firstsource ever got, probably one of the largest in the history of the BPO sector. It is something we are proud of. The deal would be a game-changer for us," Goenka said.
"In the next three years, there would be disruptions in the way we would bring value-adds (at Sky). Given the uplift we got from them, next year we would be at the top end of industry growth," said Rajesh Subramaniam, managing director and chief executive officer of Firstsource.
The development stands in sharp contrast to what happened earlier at Disney, also an entertainment company, based in the US. There, about 250 tech staff at Orlando were replaced by outsourced Indian employees from HCL and Cognizant, which was challenged in the court by some aggrieved Disney staff.
The appeal was, however, dismissed in October, bringing to fore questions about US laws failing to protect its workers.
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