The traditional occupations in this geographically disadvantaged region like step farming, and religious tourism were not commensurate with the aspirations of the educated youth and also did not provide a stable income stream. So prior to eGramServe setting up shop here, in the absence of local employment, these young men & women had to out-migrate to the industrial towns of Uttarakhand like Dehradun, Haridwar or Haldwani. Our BPO center in Narendranagar has helped foster meaningful engagement and a continual income source locally for many of these youth.
Our direct impact has been on the lives of the youth whom we have trained from scratch and now deploy at our BPO center in Narendranagar. When we recruited them, none of them had even a basic exposure to working on computers. After spending couple of years at eGramServe, besides earning a decent salary here as Team leaders and Subject specialists, they are now being sought after by larger publishing services BPO companies in Dehradun for their skills.

The indirect impact has been on the local community — small business owners like the dhaba-walla, chai-walla stationary and grocery supplier — who have also benefited due to an increase in their business from the company as well as our employees. Some homeowners have also benefited due to a demand of rooms on rent as some of our employees prefer take a room in the town to avoid daily travel to their village which may me an hour’s walk away due to lack of rural roads in this hilly terrain.

Moreover all other things being equal, clients chose us over other suppliers because they feel that by engaging us they contribute to a positive social impact by helping generate employment for the youth in this disadvantaged region. Usually we have seen that clients are more than patient with us when doing the initial pilots or trail runs versus others who do not have a social impact angle.

Between 2012 and 2014 eGramServe has enabled an income of Rs. 50 Lakhs for direct employees & indirect beneficiaries like work-from-home freelancers and this has contributed to a greater demand for goods & services like mobile handsets, recharge coupons, laptops and motorbikes and have fostered a commercial eco-system within Narendranagar. By March 2018, once we attain peak capacity at Narendranagar we hope to enable an ongoing income Rs. 2.5 Cr. (US$ 400 mn) per annum for about 200 youth of this tehsil block. Hopefully the local youth here will transform from being grant receivers to becoming taxpayers.