Can Raman Roy come storming back and do it once again? The chartered accountant turned founder of the Indian BPO industry has, in the last 15 years, started three giant companies from scratch and walked away covered in glory each time. Now, like Roger Federer or Pete Sampras, he?s heading back to Centre Court to see if he can do it once again.

It?s only six weeks since Roy suddenly quit Wipro Spectramind, the BPO giant he started barely five years ago backed by a team of professionals and venture capitalists. But Roy is already back in the thick of the action, holding conference calls deep into the night with potential investors and customers. The night before he was on the phone till three at night and he was out of home for meetings by nine. ?My daughter says ?But you?ve quit your job, where are you going?? he laughs.

Inevitably, Roy is being deluged by business propositions both from hi-tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists hoping to back his Next Big Thing. That?s hardly surprising considering his track record. Back in the early ?90s, Roy, a veteran executive with American Express, was given the task of starting a call centre that would handle customer queries, complaints and other back-office work. Says Roy, ?Starting the call centre was one more assignment. Definitely I was in the right place at the right time.?

The rest, as they say, is history. Roy founded the country?s first BPO, earning himself the title, ?Father of the Indian BPO industry?. Soon afterwards he was poached to do the same for American giant GE ? it?s now the country?s biggest call centre with around 25,000 employees at its Gurgaon centre.

In 2000 he quit GE to become an entrepreneur and start his own company Spectramind. The company went racing into the fast lane almost immediately and the inevitable happened quickly ? two years later Wipro boss Azim Premji came along with an offer Roy couldn?t refuse and bought the controlling stake in the company. Roy stayed on till last month.

What will it be this time? Is he staying in the BPO industry or has he discovered a new niche that?s waiting to be exploited and turned into a billion-dollar industry? Says Roy firmly, ?My next venture will definitely be in the BPO space. Mochi kho jutha banana aathe (a cobbler knows how to make shoes).?

For now he?s operating on an extremely modest scale. He has rented a second-floor apartment that?s walking distance from his home and turned one room into an office and a second into a conference chamber with an eight-seater desk. But there?s no staff yet, not even a secretary to keep track of his appointments. ?There?s just me and the teaboy,? he says, waving his arm around him. Inevitably, working without a secretary has resulted in occasional time-management disasters and just the day before he fixed one appointment at one end of the city and headed off to a second meeting in another.

One thing?s for sure. He not daunted by the thought of starting all over again. He?s always telling anyone who cares to listen that the Indian BPO industry has barely scratched the surface and has heaps of room to grow. And he?s convinced that scores of opportunities are waiting to be converted into thriving businesses. ?Because of the kind of work I?ve done I see ideas that other people may not have thought about,? he says.

Mentally, Roy has set himself a deadline. He is drawing up a blueprint and by end-September hopes to have the future charted out. Meanwhile, he?s talking and listening and hearing out proposals like one from a 1,000-seater BPO company which reckons it isn?t growing fast enough and wants him to come on board. He?s considering the possibility of working with them and simultaneously working on a handful of other projects. Says Roy, ?I don?t have the bandwidth to take on more than three or four projects.?

What is it that drives hi-tech industry entrepreneurs ? everyone from Steve Jobs of Apple to others like Hotmail?s Sabeer Bhatia and Raman Roy ? to start all over again? Once they?ve made their millions why can?t they retire to the golf course or buy an obscenely large yacht and cruise around the high seas?

There are many answers to that one, says Roy. For a start, the money hasn?t altered lives in the hi-tech industry as much as might be imagined. According to Roy, about 40 people at Wipro Spectramind had stock options included in their packages. Out of that about 10 or 12 made enough from the options to stay at home for the rest of their lives, if they so desired. ?But their lifestyles haven?t changed much. Some have bought slightly bigger cars and others have bought bigger houses but all of them are still working,? he says. Incidentally, he has just upgraded from a Mitsubishi Lancer to a Toyota Corolla.

The answer, he insists, lies in the feeling of having created something and of having touched people?s lives. Roy has hundreds of stories of small town youngsters whose lives have been transformed by making the journey to the big city. Their jobs may seem like drudgery to others but it means all the difference between being a burden on their parents and being independent. Currently, the BPO industry employs about 350,000 people and that?s expected to zoom to 1 million by 2009. Both the GE and American Express BPO operations which Roy founded are still expanding exponentially and the less than five-year-old Wipro Spectramind employs about 16,000 people. Wipro Spectramind is hiring several hundred people a month to keep pace with its booming growth.

Certainly, Roy has touched lives and put his name in the record books more than once ? American Express was the country?s first call centre and Spectramind was the first third party call centre (which handled work for outside clients).

But isn?t it boring to be doing the same thing all over again? ?No,? says Roy. ?You don?t climb Mount Everest by the same path every time. And it?s the love for the mountain that makes you keep going back.?

Photograph by Jagan Negi