India diary: Day nine - Exploring New Delhi

silicon.com reporter Andy McCue was on assignment in India from 14 to 23 April investigating offshoring efforts in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. This is his diary. Articles and commentary on IT offshoring and BPO in India and elsewhere will be appearing on silicon.com over the coming weeks. You can find them all here.

22/4/04: I check into my hotel in the middle of the almost deserted and immaculately kept diplomatic enclave where all the embassies are located.

I get an early start to the day. My escort is Richard Perry from the Executive Learning Alliance, a firm which organises tours in India for UK executives wanting to find out more about the BPO market. He lives in British embassy accommodations in New Delhi with his diplomat wife. We head out on the road for a visit to Gurgaon, about 20 km away, one of the two main high-tech areas around New Delhi.

Gurgaon appears to be a long highway out of the city dominated by huge modern office buildings on either side of the road. I see names such as Vertex, the United Utilities subsidiary BPO, dotted around.

At the gates of the first company, Hill & Associates, a risk management consultancy led by ex-Indian special forces guys, the guard at the gate casually slides a bomb mirror under the front of the Range Rover for a cursory check as we drive in. "Of course, terrorists don't put bombs under the back of cars," says Richard sarcastically. He explains that in India too often things are done merely to tick a box rather than with any initiative. In the call centres this can translate into staff unable to deviate from standard answers on a crib sheet - much to the frustration of customers calling in.

Next I pay a visit to one of the ground-breaking companies when it comes to offshoring, GE Capital. Security here is absolutely not a 'box ticker' - I am escorted everywhere. GE doesn't often talk to journalists about their operations here and I'm treated to a high-level briefing - most of which is, unfortunately, strictly off-the-record.

Back in town I meet with India's IT trade body and the main ambassador for offshore outsourcing, Nasscom, at its headquarters at the rather unimpressively titled 'youth centre' complex. After evicting a sleeping stray dog from under the Range Rover, lunch is a chicken sandwich at Subway, the first Western fast-food chain I've visited on my India tour. One of the refreshing features of the journey has been the lack of the usual Starbucks and McDonald's signs that can be found in any city or town in the world.

Later in the day it's back out of town to a small business park called the Oklha Industrial estate. There are several big names here - one of which is online travel firm ebookers, who I'm here to visit - but the place doesn't look like much compared to the other gleaming high-tech campuses I've seen. It's an old industrial area housing a paper mill that's seen better days. The roads are narrow and parking seems to be at a premium.

Outside the Tecnovate facility - ebookers' BPO subsidiary, in which it owns a majority stake - I notice an ebookers logo. After interviewing the CFO, I'm given a tour of the call centre at the bottom of the building just as it is starting to come to life late in the afternoon. It is divided up by the European regions it serves; a huge picture of the Eiffel tower hangs above the French section. There's a hot-desking policy here and in truth this call centre could be anywhere in the world - it's modern, clean and soulless.

One differentiator for Tecnovate is that it employs European staff who come over and work in India to serve the foreign language customers. Staff from Scandinavian offices apparently jump at the chance to spend a year or two in India on Indian wages to experience life here and travel.

Coming out of Tecnovate it seems I've walked into a different world. An hour earlier it was over 40 degrees centigrade with baking sunshine. Now the sky is dark and the roads are under a half-foot of water. Thankfully the Range Rover is more than equipped to cope with the conditions. As we make our way back into New Delhi at rush hour, the roads are snarled up. Dozens of auto-rickshaws and motorbikes are marooned, having given up the ghost in protest at the mini flood. Other motorcyclists simply battle on through the rain in shorts and T-shirts as though this was perfectly normal.

On one stretch of a dual carriageway, the inside lane is almost completely flooded under several inches of water. Gridlocked traffic jostles and hoots in the single outside lane. Then in a scene that could only take place in India, a lone cow casually wades through the water in the opposite direction to the stationary cars.

With the sky blackening by the minute I head back to the sanctuary of the hotel.