A CEO will always be a CEO. This could be a rumor, but if it is not, then this is huge. Apparently jailed Indian tycoon Ramalinga Raju is being roped in as a CEO for a Prison BPO (business process outsourcing).

Two things to note here. A prison BPO is something new and not heard of before. A prison doesn’t always have a former CEO of a large IT organization. Not many CEOs go to jail  and not many jails come up with novel idea of prison BPO.  Ramalinga Raju is credited with the concept of rural BPOs in India which use car batteries to fulfill their power . I am sure that funds will not be siphoned off from this BPO. I wonder who would sit on the board of this BPO?

Stay tuned for more updates.

 

Update 1 : TOI reports that the BPO will start operations on November 1, 2010. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Radiant Technologies are setting up the hardware. A Canadian banking sector firm could be the BPO’s overseas customer. The operation will be examining scanned documents which are are non-confidential in nature. India’s Home Minister P Chidambaram will be inaugurating the operations. 

What would be the dollar rate for this? Typically the employees make up more than half of a BPO’s operating cost. Assuming the employees – convicted felons – aren’t paid, all this organization has to worry about is software and hardware costs. A lean organization. This will bring down the hourly rate dramatically. 

What do the customers of the Canadian banking firm think of this? The western world is going gaga over Indians stealing their jobs. Now if they only knew that Indian prisoners are stealing their jobs.