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Tue May 10 03:56:58 PDT 2005

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 Virtual Secretary Puts New Face on Pakistan

 By S. Mitra Kalita

  In a chic downtown lobby across the street from the Old Executive Office Building, Saadia Musa answers phones, orders sandwiches and lets in the FedEx guy.

 And she does it all from Karachi, Pakistan.

 As receptionist for the Resource Group, Musa greets employees and visitors via a flat screen hanging on the lobby's wall. Although they are nine hours behind and nearly 7,500 miles away, her U.S.-based bosses rely on her to keep order during the traffic of calls and meetings.

 The Resource Group, a call-center company, represents a model that might sound familiar: U.S. companies save money by offshoring certain tasks to developing countries with cheaper workers who can telemarket, integrate data and program computer code. These "back-office" functions have created a booming, multibillion-dollar industry in countries such as India, Ireland and the Philippines.

 Now, companies such as the Resource Group hope to replicate that success in Pakistan. But because of regular State Department travel advisories, news footage of militants chanting in the streets and rumors that Osama bin Laden might be hiding in the western region's cavernous mountains, some American businesses remain skeptical.

 Zia Chishti, the Resource Group's founder, parrots clients' initial reaction: "Pakistan, are you crazy? No way."

 And that's how a virtual secretary (toiling in the front office, no less) became a concrete example of offshoring, an answer to skeptics' questions: How exactly does offshoring work? Is Pakistan safe? Do workers speak intelligible English?

 "We present Saadia, and the debate ends right there," said Hasnain Aslam, head of investments. "We're able to show that we practice what we preach."

 Chishti and Aslam are part of a small entrepreneurial group of Pakistan's expatriates who have returned -- at least for part of the year -- to their homeland, even as Western businesses plotted their exodus in a post-Sept. 11 world.

 "You have to look for other opportunities that people haven't seen," Chishti said.

 Born and educated in the United States, Chishti co-founded the Resource Group three years ago after selling his shares in a California dental-imaging company he had also founded. That company, Align Technology Inc., left its operations in Lahore, Pakistan, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and Chishti took the abandoned office filled with laid-off workers and asked them to trust his vision for a call-center empire. "Pakistan was very late to this game," he said. "India had already been at it for a decade or more."

 Comparisons to India are inevitable yet somehow impossible. Pakistan remains just a blip in the offshoring industry, generating an estimated $150 million in revenue from software and related services last year, according to the Pakistan Software Houses Association. India, meanwhile, generated $12.8 billion. Most of the estimated 100 call centers in Pakistan were set up in the past two years, according to a report by the Pakistan Software Export Board.

 The Resource Group, which employs 4,000 people worldwide and reports $170 million in revenue, operates under the philosophy that catching up is possible.

 "It makes perfect sense. The basic structure of Pakistan is very similar to India," Chishti said. "The labor pool is totally untapped."

 The company's strategy is rooted in acquiring U.S. call centers and supporting them via operations in Karachi and Lahore, where workers perform the telemarketing services and tasks such as payroll, accounting and human resources work. Telephone operators are trained in American English and culture -- and the secrets of success in an industry where most calls are not welcome.

 "A smile can be heard," Musa recited in an interview via her flat screen. She worked as a call-center operator before being promoted to secretary. "Posture can make a difference. A dress code makes a difference."

 A recent job fair in Falls Church sponsored by the Pakistan American Business Association yielded a handful of companies in the Washington region that either outsource work to Pakistan or have an office there. They stressed the lower costs, but to their country brethren gathered at the event, they also articulated a loftier goal: to transform their homeland.

 "After 9/11, there are a lot of good people in government who are empowering business to change the image of Pakistan," said Shakeel Tufail, president of Alexandria's Insyte LLC, a computer-training and education company that operates a call center of about a dozen workers in Karachi. "Everyone needs some sort of sustenance, and business brings people together. If it's mutually beneficial, if you're increasing prosperity, there will be less sectarian violence, less crime."

 Pakistan, a country once married to India under the British Empire, still operates under a quasi-feudal system in which elite landlords profit mightily off the poor. Unemployment is high and wages are low; the per capita income is $2,200. As in many developing countries, corruption can be a problem.

 At the Resource Group, where the chief operating officer is a Rhodes scholar and Harvard degrees are commonplace, Chishti says he tries to "steer clear of the political stuff." Still, he wonders if his company can play a role in creating a new Pakistan. "If you've got a guy without a job, that's the prime candidate for radicalization," Chishti said. "By giving those people hope, you're taking the edge off the potential. We're stressing not separation but integration with developed markets."

 Last month, the information technology minister of Pakistan's Sindh province, where Karachi is located, embarked on a U.S. tour from Silicon Valley to Washington to drum up support for offshoring to Pakistan.

 But so far, the U.S. tech industry has not noticed Pakistan, said Harris Miller, president of Information Technology Association of America. "They haven't really shown up on the radar screen as being a major player," he said.

 And while the two countries demonstrated their nuclear prowess in a series of 1998 tests, Miller said India has been better able to reassure the global community of stability. He said the Indian tech sector has lobbied its government to keep the peace.

 In Pakistan, companies are more likely to lobby for the infrastructure they need to do business with the United States, said Jehan Ara, president of the Pakistan Association of Software Houses. "If you look at our government incentives, they are pretty good," Ara said in a phone interview from Karachi, where she runs a multimedia company.

 Indeed, there are trade-offs in doing business in a developing country. In August, Bob Beringer, chief executive of Rockville's Electronic On-Ramp Inc., traveled to Karachi with a delegation of American businesses. He had already hired one Pakistani firm to handle a contract for his information-technology and security company, and he wanted to check on other prospective partners.

 "The power grid's not stable, so once a month, workers might lose a day and a half," Beringer said. And having been escorted by armed guards, Beringer acknowledged he did not feel totally safe. Being a Westerner made him feel, at times, self-conscious. "There was a bomb threat while we were there," he said.

 Still, most entrepreneurs say even a cursory cost-benefit analysis can help clinch a decision.

 Mid-level programmers can be hired for as little as $6 an hour. Those low rates make it less costly to test new ideas. "There's no better way to reduce the risk of investing in something that doesn't exist yet," Beringer said.

 So despite his anxiety, Beringer signed contracts with two more companies in Karachi.

 His quandary, though, is one familiar to Pakistanis. Consider the cover of Newsline, a popular Pakistani magazine: three women, one clad in a burqa, another sporting a sequined, leather mini-skirt and the middle filled by a call-center worker donning a headset. The headline implores, "Will the real Pakistani woman please stand up?"

 For Musa, the Resource Group's secretary, the changes unfolding around her are refreshing. At 21, she says there's no pressure to get married and she wants to wait until she's a millionaire; "by the time I'm 30," she promises. She spells her name and chuckles that the last three letters -- u-s-a -- are no coincidence.

 She turns the camera -- which is usually focused on her face -- to offer a view of her surroundings in Karachi: a lounge, a cafeteria, a pool table. "You walk into this space and think, 'Am I still in Karachi?' " she said.

 Just then, a phone call interrupts her. It is 1:15 a.m. where Musa sits.

 "Good afternoon," Musa says brightly. "Thank you for calling the Resource Group."

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