Rural Shores, formed to provide jobs to youth in rural areas, is seeking financial assistance from World Bank for ramping up its rural BPO facilities.

“World Bank is consi­dering providing funding for the viability gap. This will be used to increase the man­power at rural BPO in And­hra Pradesh,” Rural Shores chief executive officer Mu­rali Vullapati told Fina­ncial Chronicle.

The Pulla Centre, in West Godavari district, has been established a year ago with an upfront capital of Rs 65,00,000 as part of the e-Avakasam initiative, laun­ched by the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (Serp) in Andhra Pradesh to handle banking, financial, insurance sector processes and automatisation of gove­rnment data. Presently, it has 72 people working there with an equal gender mix and a majority of them come from families that are below the poverty line.

Rural Shores spent more than Rs 1 crore in operating the centre. The centre is expected to breakeven in 12 months and is trying to get more work, he said, adding that the Pulla BPO team has, so far, processed nearly two million records perta­ining to government sche­mes Abhaya Hastam, social security pensions, student loans and others.

“We have exceeded the expectations of local gover­nment officials in terms of quality of the output and in meeting the time targets,” Murali said.

krishnamohan@mydigitalfc.com