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Gurgaon has been the preferred choice for BPO companies but due to skyrocketing realty rates the city may lose out to Noida and Greater Noida in the scramble for office space. The inherent advantages which Gurgaon provided included the tailor made offices for these firms, which made a beeline for a premise in the city. Gurgaon has the distinct advantage of being off the block for over a decade and over the years Gurgaon has successfully dealt and adjusted to the challenges posed by constantly changing infrastructure needs due to accelerated growth and development in the area. Nodal agencies have pro actively taken positive initiatives which has helped increase the FAR (floor area ratio) and the redressal of issues is time bound. Also timely help and support from the government agencies has played a vital role in creating and attracting real estate and property investment to Gurgaon.
The easy availability of qualified personnel from the neighbouring cities of Chandigarh, Dehradun, Jaipur plays a major role in attracting BPOs to set up their offices in Gurgaon. The infrastructure and better connectivity due to the expressways and the proposed Metro Rail have gone in favour of Guragon.
Specific real estate and infrastructure requirements for BPO in Gurgaon
Typically, a BPO requires a building with large floor plates, reasonably good floor to ceiling height (at least 3.75 mts), good column grids (at least 11mx11m). Since they operate 24 hours on a shift basis, building maintenance becomes the key. An outsourcing office would require 100% power back-up and 24x7 air-conditioning system. “A breakdown of fifteen minutes translates to a loss of a few million dollars. A BPO firm functions on lesser operating margins and look at efficient floor space and minimum real estate & operational costs. The minimum space requirement per person is 75 sq ft per person and ideally the space should be rectangular (never oval or circular) to maximise space efficiency.
Also a good and affordable residential space in the neighbourhood coupled with social infrastructure forms an essential component. Since most of the employees in a call centre are young boys and girls from various cities who like to live closer to their office due to their erratic working hours. And even though majority of the BPO offices or the call centres provide transport facility to their employees they still wish to have an adequate public conveyance system to cut down their costs. There are more than 103 parameters that help organisations make decisions regarding the location of their offices or centres of excellence (CoE). These include plot & building characteristics, type of construction (raft/pile), floor shape (rectangles are preferred) & effective utilisation (column less units), availability of power & telecom infrastructure, effective building management system and the lease terms, among others. Gurgaon has with the help and support of the state government e f f e c t ive ly and efficiently managed the expectations of BPO players.
However, with the rising real estate prices in Gurgaon all this may change and the city might lose out to Noida, Greater Noida and other places which offer cheap realty rates. “The BPO firms have started toying with the idea of shifting to suburbs in other parts of the NCR.
Of late, there have been cases of Gurgaon-based companies looking at Noida for office space. In fact, Oracle, Hewitt have already taken up space in Noida. Noida has been emerging as an alternate destination for IT/ITES companies because of its proximity to Delhi and realistic level of realty price. Jaisimha opines that high rental rates — Rs 70 to Rs 85/sq ft/month in the builder sectors, while Rs 40 to Rs 45/sq ft/month in Udyog Vihar — which is not viable for a BPO set up in Gurgaon.
Delhi has been saturated for long and with equally high rental rates the real competition is now between Noida, Greater Noida and Gurgaon. “In the coming days, Greater Noida may emerge as an ultimate destination and may give Noida and Gurgaon a run for their money.
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