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"Call centers are symbols of India's economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country. But now the boom is going bust because India's college graduates and young job seekers just don't want to be bothered with the business anymore." - TIME

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Sherwin Crasto / Reuters / Corbis

Call centers are symbols of India's economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country. But now the boom is going bust because India's college graduates and young job seekers just don't want to be bothered with the business anymore.

Young people say it is no longer worthwhile going through sleepless nights serving customers halfway around the world. They have better job opportunities in other fields. The work is tiring and stressful and offers few career advancement opportunities, says Dr. A. Sankara Reddy, head of Sri Venkateswara College in New Delhi. In response to students' complaints, Reddy said the college a few months ago banned call center recruiters from campus. At least a handful of other local colleges over the last few years have made the same decision.

The complaints come at a time when the Indian information technology sector, which includes companies that run call centers and do other outsourced work like medical transcription and claims processing, is facing a dearth of skilled labor. Many are opening back offices in other developing countries. India faces a potential shortage of 500,000 professional employees in the information technology sector by 2010, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), a trade group.

Although the country produces hundreds of thousands of graduates each year, many lack the skills — in some cases, fluency in English — to be employed. The industry is also facing "intense competition" for workers from the retail and airline and hospitality sectors, where wages are now closer to what call centers pay, said Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM. As India expands its share of more sophisticated outsourcing like financial analysis and product research and development, Karnik said competition for choice employees is also growing. "As recently as four years back, the choice was pretty clear," Karnik said. "Either you got a high-paying, good job at a call center or no job at all. Today, not only are there other options, but they are pretty close to the call centers [in terms of salaries]."

That's a sentiment shared by many students at Sri Venkateswara College. On a recent Friday afternoon, a group of students chatted under the shade of a tree on the last day of classes before fall break Asked whether they would consider working at a call center, all eight said no, citing concerns about abusive customers and the long-term health effects of the jobs. "Earlier it was considered cool to work at a call center," said Nishant Thakur, 19, after the group had dispersed. "That died out quite quickly." Added Thakur's friend, Vishal Lathwal, 19, "If you work at a call center today people will think you don't have anything else to do or were a bad student."

In addition to having to work at night, call center workers must sometimes cope with abusive and racist remarks from overseas customers upset with jobs being shifted to India. In an infamous example two years ago, a Philadelphia-based radio show host pretending to order hair beads from an Indian call center operator berated her as a "dirty rat eater." While the abuse was for an on-air program, Indian call center workers say they've encountered similar sentiments from real customers. Within six months to a year, their dreams of making "lots of money" and buying motorcycles and other consumer goods fade, says Vinod Shetty, a labor lawyer in Mumbai and advocate for call center operators. "The burnout is very high." The Indian government is concerned about stress-related conditions like high blood pressure at call centers and other outsourcing companies and is working on a health policy for the industry.

Still, industry experts say the jobs remain attractive for graduates of less prestigious schools that may not attract the job options of their elite peers. In an e-mail, Elango R, chief human resources officer for outsourcing firm MphasiS, which runs call centers, said the company has not had trouble recruiting workers and will hire 5,000 new graduates next year. Karnik said call center companies are experimenting with policies to reduce attrition. They are splitting the night shift between two workers and providing incentives like covering the cost of an MBA. But the lure of call centers may continue to diminish as India's economy grows and creates more opportunities for young college graduates. When the phone rings years from now, the call center may be in another country entirely.

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Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com

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Call centers are symbols of India's economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country.

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You may not know his but 7-Eleven convenient stores is currently headquartered in Japan.

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Link to article about companies that you wouldn't expect to be foreign owned.

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Over the last several years, foreign companies have quietly been acquiring a piece of Americana. Most Americans don't realize that when they go to see Monsters University this weekend, if they do it at an AMC theater chain, they are doing so in a theater owned by the Chinese.

This summer, any Forbes reader lucky enough to be powering out of Newport on their new Sunseeker would have bought it from a Chinese yacht maker, not a British one. The Dalian Wanda Group acquired Sunseeker this month.

Foreign firms are moving in and buying up household names from sea to shining sea, and then some.

The landmark Pierre Hotel in New York City? It's owned by Indian conglomerate The Tata Group.

Unlike the 1980s, when the Japanese were buying U.S. real estate and selling Hondas for the first time to Main Streeters abandoning their Detroit made cars, the strategy for firms from China to Brazil has largely been to acquire existing brands. But in the not so distant future, Americans will be eating, driving, flying and wearing brands that are designed and uniquely linked to countries other than those in the advanced economies.

Relatively few firms have been able to claim that status here, outside of the usual Japanese, European and Canadian names. In Brazil, Americans have been flying on jets made in Brazil for decades now.

There's going to be more Embraers. Only they'll own brands Americans know and love.

Ten years ago, no one would have believed that Samsung could rival in the television space, but it does. Now Samsung is going after to make its Galaxy branded smartphones and tablets the devices of choice for wired Americans.

The same is going to happen with companies from China, says Nirmalya Kumar, a professor of marketing at the London Business School and Director of the school's Aditya Birla India Center.

"The Chinese are using American money from its trade deficit with you and putting it to use to acquire American brands," he said. "Every sector in China has a company Beijing wants to developing into a market leader. They have an acquisition agenda. It is hard to predict which one will break out."

It's easier to just buy a brand. The hardest thing for these countries will be building the next Honda and Samsung, which started out the same way many Chinese firms have started -- as a contract manufacturer.

"The story of poor quality in China is coming to an end now and out of all the big emerging nations out there with cash to spend, they are the ones I see coming up with the new global brand first," he said. Out of the Fortune 500 companies, China has 73 of them. Only the U.S. has more.

Kumar said retailer Shanghai Tang was one of the Chinese brands he expects will be able to tap the middle class Chinese consumer at home and abroad.

This is not 1980s America. Today's emerging markets are taking a different approach than Japan, which brought home-grown technology to the United States market to sell. They came with Nintendos and Nissans, products that already had a name for themselves back home. Companies are now testing the waters by buying good U.S. brands first.

They're buying them cheap.

There are two factors at work, says Kamar in his new book "Brand Breakout: How Emerging Market Brands Will Go Global". He calls it the push-pull factor.

"These countries are generating a lot of money in their home markets and they have a lot of cash on hand. That's the push factor. The pull factor is that they are seeing cheap valuations in the U.S., and in Europe, and they have the cash to buy them at a reasonable price," he said in an interview with Forbes this week. "They know they are buying a franchise that will generate cash for them for generations. It would take decades for them to build that brand on their own and there is no guarantee that they'd be as successful as Japan. I don't think the slowdown in emerging economies is a factor. This trend isn't going to stop now."
The Brand Acquisition Route
A little piece of Americana is being acquired each year. It's not a bad thing. People from Brazil have been accustomed to being surrounded by McDonald's and Coca-Cola since the 1950s. Americans are unlikely to see new, foreign brands on grocery store shelves anytime soon. Instead, they will be buying Entenmann's mini-chocolate chip cookies owned by Mexican firm Grupo Bimbo instead.

According to consulting firm A.T. Kearney, between 2006 and 2011, 6,500 acquisitions were made and 78% of them initiated from the advanced economies. However, of the 194 deals that were over a $1 billion, 41% of them were from the emerging markets.

To determine who was acquiring whom, The Economist magazine looked at World Bank data from 2000 to 2010 and found that China led the charge in mergers and acquisitions cross-border, and they were mostly buying up American firms. The Chinese government actively supports the rush to acquire assets overseas, especially natural resources. Over the past decade, China's capital outflow has grown ten-fold to around $62 billion.

Given China's $3.5 trillion in reserves, many economists figure China will be investing as much as $500 billion overseas in seven years. (That would require China to quadruple outward investment though, so the number is more than a bit bullish.)

If Made in China characterized the past 20 years, says Kumar, then Owned by China may characterize the next. Buying up brands is an important part of that story.

Emerging market companies "buy...to gain complementary competencies -- assets such as technologies, products, brands or distribution networks and capabilities like new business models and marketing and innovation skills -- the value of which outweighs the high operating costs and stagnant domestic market," Kumar and his colleague Jan Benedict Steenkamp wrote in "Brand Breakout".

Once they get the distribution network in place, companies can introduce their own brands to market. And when that happens, Americans might be buying more Chery sedans instead of Chevrolets, or drinking Guarana -- owned by Ambev -- instead of Coke.

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The Foreign Companies That Are Buying Up America

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Over the last several years, foreign companies have quietly been acquiring a piece of Americana. Most Americans don't realize that when they go to see Monsters University this weekend, if they do it at an AMC theater chain, they are doing so in a theater owned by the Chinese.

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India has become a growing part of the "IT Revolution" and is an attractive place for U.S. companies to outsource. This is because of low wages, english speakers, trained workers, and the time zone. You may be thinking, doesn't outsourcing take jobs away from Americans? Yes although the U.S. is also home to many other foreign companies. The U.S. attracts many because of how developed the country is and the very very smart workers.

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The Indian Institute of Technology

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Young students learning in a primary school.

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Many people and students in India attend a test prep school to get into college because they believe that a good education will help get good jobs. Many companies look to India because of the well trained workers. India is very dedicated to higher education and over 3 million Indian's graduated from college in 2005 and the number is increasing rapidly. Since 1951, the Indian Institute of Technology has been one of the best technological schools in the world. Indian law says that children up to the age of 14 must attend school although only about half actually do. "Roughly 350 million people in India can not read or write". Poverty affects many people and their ability to go to school. Many children have to work to support their families. There are many children who have a hard time going to required education and even more who can't attend college. If you are lucky enough to graduate with a good degree, it is still very difficult to find a good job, sometimes resulting in relocation. The IT world is growing very quickly even in India and some companies are growing so fast they are outsourcing jobs to China.

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Link to British library with an article about English in India.

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Little fact about the amount of Indian's who speak English. There are actually 125,226,449 Indian's who speak English.

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Online video of an American lady speaking about how to better pronounce words to sound more American.

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American Accent Training for Indian Speakers

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Try my new video program: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/learnamericanaccent This video focuses on the key issues first language Indian speakers face when attempting to speak with an American accent. Learn how to be perceived as speaking "more slowly" without slowing down! Use breath & stressed syllables to your advantage.

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In India, there are classes that are taught about American English to call center workers. They watch American media to pick up an American accent. Indian's ability to speak English is another reason that IT is popular in India. Many Indian's speak English although Hindu is the national language. During the 1600's, the British came to India and made it a colony. The British created schools to train Indian's to speak English. They hoped that speaking English would unite the country more. Once India gained independence in 1947, English was a very popular language and spoken by many. English is used in business and many families send the children to English speaking schools. Because of the large amount of English speakers, India is an attractive place for U.S. business.

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Group of employees that work for a computer software support service.

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Average costs of living and average cost of basic things in Bangalore.

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Chart comparing yearly salaries between the U.S. and India.

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A job that was done for $45,000 a year in the U.S. was done for only $35,000 a year in India. Having a call center in India helps companies save money, which is why it is so attractive. "In 2005, there were more people working in India than the entire population of the United States. By 2020, India is expected to have the largest workforce in the world.". In India, many people are looking for a job, so many will accept low pay. American companies can cut their costs in almost half by employing in India. Bangalore has a generally low cost of living which makes it easy for people with low salaries to enjoy a relatively high standard of living. Indians are attracted to Information Technology ( IT ) jobs because of the good wages and working conditions. Along with good wages, the amenities of working on an IT workplace is attractive to many. Those below are employees of a computer software support call center.

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Time zone map of the world, as you can see, India is generally 12 hours different.

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Physical Features map of India.

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Religions in India pie chart.

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India is a very diverse country and has many different physical features despite the many cities. "India is about one third the size of the United States, but its population is more than three times as large. With over one billion people, India is the second most populous country in the world.". All Indians have equal rights but they aren't all necessarily treated the same. When you are born, you are born into the same caste ( group ) as your parents. The caste system was used to determine work but is gradually changing as people in lower caste would like to improve their position. Muslims serve as a large portion of Indians but more are Hindu. Conflicts about disagreements between the two sometimes leads to violence. Despite the fast growing economy India is still one of the poorest countries with many still in poverty. The economy is growing because many are adapting to new technology and Indian's technology services are very inexpensive for foreign companies. India is on the opposite side of the world from us which makes it convenient for U.S. companies to take advantage. This makes it easy so that companies in the U.S. pay Indian's to work during the U.S. night hours and Americans to work during the day. Bangalore is popular for Information Technology and people interested in innovation.

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"The Culture shock of India's call centers.""

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Five students in business casual and the two authors in board shorts were crammed into a small classroom in Southern Bangalore. It was one of those cubicle classrooms, surrounded by three just like it, with a small whiteboard on one end and the teacher sitting at a desk on the other. You could see into the other empty classrooms through the matrix of windows that formed walls around them, supported by bright orange metal framing. Three students slouched wearily in their seats on one side; they barely spoke enough English to understand the teacher. The other two sat opposite, more attentive, pens poised over notepads half full with scribbles. The teacher was glaring at the weary ones.

"But sir..."

"No! I want you to speak without it. Close the book Sajar!"

Sajar was clearly at a loss for what to do. He glanced at his notebook hesitantly.

"I said close the damned book!"

The student looked at his teacher pleadingly, searching for sympathy but finding only a scowl. He closed the front of his notebook nervously. Deep could be intimidating.

"Good --" said Deep. "Now, recite two sentences from what you had written."

The student kept his head bent down in silence.

"No? How about one sentence? Just ONE sentence Sajar!"

More silence.

The teacher's voice turned soft with contempt. "See, once the book is closed you're dumb. Ab-so-lut-ely dumbstruck."

Deep whirled around and faced the remainder of his call center training class, all of whom were hoping to get jobs working in one of Bangalore's customer service centers. His sweeping gaze settled upon his favorite student.

"Krishna - Go."

Called to attention, a gangly Indian quickly straightened up in his seat and placed his hands, neatly folded, upon his desk. He was easily the best dressed student in the class, striped button down shirt and pleated slacks riding above a pair of conspicuously polished leather shoes. Krishna drew in a sharp breath, and cleared his voice.

"Good morning friends. Thank you all for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this morning on the topic of killing the girl child..." he recited in the singsong voice of memorization.

In what was supposed to be a spontaneous discussion about female infanticide in India, Krishna's delivery was every bit as scripted as whatever Sajar had written in his notebook. But the teacher, Deep, didn't seem to mind. At least Krishna had bothered to commit his words to memory. Krishna was the star student, who always came to class prepared. He had more pressure than most to land a job at a call center.

Krishna Shah is 30 years old and unmarried. To a conservative Indian family like his, that combination is unacceptable. The South Indian comes from a culture where expectations are that men marry by the time they are 25. But in India, one of the requisites of the desirable bachelor is a respectable job, and Krishna hasn't been able to land one. Though he spent years working abroad in Dubai for a graphic design firm, he hasn't been able to transfer that experience back into a job at home. Now, Krishna is anxious to settle down and start a family, pressured by the rumors circulating among his village 40 kilometers south of Mysore.

"My family and friends will speak fine when they're in front of me, but as soon as I go away, they backstab me like anything," he revealed during one of our class breaks, referring to gossip around the dining room table when he isn't home.

Krishna thinks that a job at a call center is the key to tying the knot. In India, the customer service jobs are known to be respectable and well-paying, enough to give Krishna the income, and the title, to become a suitable bachelor. While a typical wage earner earns 5,000 rupees a month, a call center employee takes in as much as 15,000 rupees (300 dollars).

The bachelor enrolled in the four month call center training course at Orion Edutech after hearing about it from a friend in Bangalore, and his parents agreed to heft the 45,000 rupee bill (900 dollars). Located on the third floor of a nondescript office building in Bangalore's Jayanagar district, Orion is an Indian equivalent to American vocational schools like ITT Tech or Devry University. There are over 100 Orion campuses across India, and the private courses are popular among prospective call center applicants in India as a resume booster to give them a competitive edge in the hiring process.

As long as your accent is good, it's not that hard to get a job on the floor, because of the high burnout rate and booming industry. There are over 265,000 BPO jobs in Bangalore alone, of which call center positions represent a sizable proportion. BPO is the buzzword form of business process outsourcing - the trend of multinational companies like Microsoft to base services or entire departments in India, and which has been causing dire headlines in the United States about jobs shipped overseas since the early 2000's. Indeed, the effects of the industry's growth in India are easy to see. India's 'garden city' is surrounded by gated tech campuses like Wipro and Infosys that rival the size and splendor of those in the Silicon Valley, complete with cappuccino bars, movie theatres, and golf cart lanes.

Many, like Krishna, want in on a piece of the action, and private courses like Orion's promise to help by teaching Western cultural mannerisms. The courses also claim to help boost English proficiency and conversational skills.

That was how we ended up in the back of Deep's classroom. Orion had let us sit in on a few sessions in return for our participation in cultural discussions and accent training.

"Chris, Morgan, I want to hear about your thoughts, on killing the girl child."

Every student in the classroom leaned a little further over their desks and looked at us expectantly.

Morgan began to speak about the injustices of infanticide, and Deep interjected excitedly. "Class, I want you to listen carefully to how he is pronouncing his R's!" Krishna started furiously scribbling down notes.

A primary goal of courses like Orion's is to eradicate what is known as Mother Tongue Influence, or MTI for short. MTI refers to the Indian accents and vocal inflections that remain after learning English as a second language. Courses like Deep's specialize in Accent Neutralization, which can have students repeat syllables like "pa pa pa pa pa" for 30 minutes at a time until they begin to lose their Indian accent. The goal is not to sound like an American, but to learn to speak without any accent, with perfect clarity, so that anyone can understand you over the distortion of a phone line.

"The system is rated on a ten point scale" Deep told us. "It measures your English for cross cultural understandability."

Deep says he scores a 9.55 on the test. When Chris asked how he might do, he was told he wouldn't score above an 8.5.

"You have a California accent." Deep explained. "And also, English isn't really your language. It's the Queen's language."

Deep seemed to have strong opinions about everything, and liked to declare them as facts. He told us he'd been in the call center industry long enough to know exactly what the perfect employee looks like, and when an applicant was likely to be hired. "In my class, every one of them will get hired eventually. I can bloody well guarantee it. It will just take some longer than others."

But Deep considered himself more than a simple accent trainer. He believed that his training had another mission: to prepare his students for the culture shock and social trauma that almost all call center employees suffer. He understood better than most how difficult it could be to work the graveyard shift night after night, the havoc those hours can wreak on the body's physical cycles, and how the job could make one lose touch with their family and friends. He also knew, from a long and hard personal battle with drug addiction, what a huge jump that disposable income can mean to a young adult suddenly released from the strict oversight of an Indian family. For better or for worse, he knew that each of his students would be profoundly changed by their time on the call center floor.

"When they go in, When they come out-you can't match the two people," he warned.

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The Culture Shock of India's Call Centers

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call center (Photo credit: vlima.com) by Chris Walker and Morgan Hartley Five students in business casual and the two authors in board shorts were crammed into a small classroom in Southern Bangalore. It was one of those cubicle classrooms, surrounded by three just like it, with a small whiteboard on one end [...]

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Jimmy Kimmel talks to a call center in India. Although he does not need help with anything, he needs jokes about Donald Trump.

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Mitt Romney Reads Mean Donald Trump Tweets

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Child Prodigy Tanishq Abraham 's Hilarious Science Jokes

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Jimmy Kimmel Outsources Donald Trump Jokes To An Indian Call Center

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We are still 14 months away from the election and already our supply of Donald Trump jokes is dangerously low. When we find ourselves in a situation like this from time to time, we'll outsource some of our joke writing to a company in India.

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Have you ever called about computer troubles or things in your home late at night? Call centers are a big business in India so you most likely were calling someone in India. In India, they are able to charge much less for the same jobs. Because of the growth in information technology, companies are looking to India for call centers.