Organization Profile - Source for Change

Source for Change is an all women BPO in Bagar, Rajasthan that provides services like data-entry and digitization services for its clients that include schools, hospitals, libraries and NGOs. Their recent achievement includes a successful implementation of a 19,200 form data-entry project with a turnaround time of 21 days for Pratham Rajasthan. Subsequently, Source for Change, has been nominated as the preferred provider of data-entry services for Pratham.

Services offered by Source for Change

Some of the services offered are school form processing, mortgage/insurance/ bank application processing (can be used by MFIs if they have centralized data entry), conversion of data from PDF to excel, e-books data entry & hospital registry and archival record processing.

Rationale behind an all woman BPO

Hiring women for the BPO makes both social and business sense. From the social point of view hiring women helps to increase women empowerment and providing rural women with a greater sense of self-worth since they generate income for their families. Mothers are also more likely to pass on their English speaking skills and knowledge to the children of the family ensuring a wider impact of the skills they acquire on the job.

Women have fewer options to leave their village for work in rural India since they are obliged to live with their extended families. Thus, from a business standpoint, by hiring local women from the village, zero attrition is almost guaranteed.

Employee Profile

The organization has hired 20 women, aged 18-35, with atleast a 10th grade education and are first time paid employees.

Initial Challenges

Source for Change initially faced the social barrier of hiring women for technology jobs. The organization was able to overcome this by building a strong foundation of trust with the community. The BPO also works around the schedule of their employees and offers 4- hour shifts during the day. The 4-hour shift system goes a long way in controlling attrition as it provides the women sufficient time to complete their household duties.

Sustainability of the Initiative

The organization has documented the training curriculum and mapped processes for starting a rural BPO. This documentation will act as a blueprint for entrepreneurs to start off BPOs in rural areas.