bpo jobs

Affinity Express: Embroidered success

PUNE: Voyager Emblem (India) is a BPO with a difference. Unlike the run of the mill BPOs that include call centres, technical help desks, financial analysis-knowledge process outsourcing, Voyager is engaged in the development of digitised embroidery designs.

A Pune-based company, Voyager, was among the first BPOs to offer the service of digitising embroidery designs. Affinity Express was begun in 1992 as Voyager Emblem (India), when the Canadian-US family owned Voyager Emblem, chose to look towards India.

Today, in a global market estimated to be worth $20-25bn for digitised embroidery design, Champion Voyager Design’s India unit is a 500 strong entity, serving over 3,000 big and small customers. Voyager Emblem US used to embroider and digitise the design for mass or limited manufacture, all according to customer requirements. This was offshored to India, its captive BPO, which since ’02 has become a one-stop graphics shop.

The India operations, headed by executive VP Ram V Ramchandran, began in 1992 as a joint venture between Champion, a division of the Sara Lee Corp and Voyager, and were called Champion Voyager (CV) Designs.

Now, in line with the global parent’s move, the name of the Indian operations has been changed to Affinity Express Digital Services. “We believe we are the largest in the world as an outsourced graphics design shop, with 550 people working three shifts in two locations in Pune. From ’02, we entered the business of content editing and creation,” said Vinita Iyer Ram, VP-operations, Affinity Express.

For Affinity Express, the new business means that it must convert the customer’s idea into a visual document. Here, time is of essence and Ms Ram said when the work was being done in the US, it would take between five days to 72 hours. However, off-shoring has meant a substantial reduction in time.

Mr Ramachandran added that both business segments are abstract and competition in both segments comes from in-house operations of clients. He added that originally, the graphics design shop was set up as a 25:75 JV between himself and David Grant. After the induction of two venture capital funds, none of the original promoters hold more than 10%.