Asianet News Dialogues: 'We are in the best of times in the country'

By Vipin Vijayan | First Published Nov 1, 2022, 4:53 PM IST

The kind of technology transformation that is happening in the country is phenomenal, said Guruprasad Srinivasan, Executive Director and Group CEO of Quess Corp Limited, while taking part in a special edition of Asianet News Dialogues

Guruprasad Srinivasan, Executive Director and Group CEO of Quess Corp Limited, was the special guest at Asianet News Dialogues, where he spoke at length about how within 14 years, his company became the second-largest employer (at headcount) in India after TCS.

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During the interview, Guruprasad said that his firm had over 65 offices in India with nearly 470,000 employees. "We are the creators of frontline employment. By frontline, we hire people for frontline sales, back office, data entry operators, and inbound-outbound support centres... We are part of the prime space as far as India is concerned in terms of creating employment at the bottom-most of the pyramid," he said.

Asked about the secret behind the company's massive success in a short period, Guruprasad said: "The secret is simple. Just stay focused and look at what the market wants, what the customer wants. We are in the best of times in the country -- our parents would not have seen it, and our kids would not enjoy this. The kind of technological transformation that is happening in the country is phenomenal. All this, somewhere, is layered on employment. And I believe we are in the right business."

During the interview, Guruprasad also shared his views about the unemployment problem in the country and how to solve it.

He said, "Roughly more than a million people are coming into the workforce annually across various streams. Where we play a larger role is that we work with corporates, and we are like a catalyst to move from informal to formal segment."

"Of course, if there can be more joining hands between the private players and the respective state governments, that will make a huge difference. And it is a step we are seeing happening slowly. But again, this is confined to few trades and few locations, and it requires a little bit of a policy change," he added.

As for the development and skill level in India in the unorganised sector, the Quess Corp CEO highlighted how the country has a working population of 50 crore, out of which 40 per cent or about 20 crore will be in a quasi-formal environment. "Out of the remaining, another 30 per cent would be in the agro and agro-related work, which is completely unorganised. Another 20 per cent will be MSMEs -- almost around 10 crore people work there. Hardly about three per cent would be formal employment -- a very small number. In a developed economy, this would be around eight to ten per cent. The best part is we have a good runway, and we are getting there. We will graduate there slowly. You will see more informal workforce moving into formal," he said.

"The country has about 4.5 million workforce which is temporary staff. Out of this, Quess provides around 470,000. So we are about nine to ten per cent of the organised staffing player in the country. This 4.5 million, in the last 10 years, would have moved at a rate of 16 per cent year on year. That's the kind of growth that this particular industry is making. On average, in the last ten years, there has been about 15 per cent growth, which is a good sign. This means that the acceptance of temporary staff to perform a certain task is actually getting more robust over a period of time," he added.

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