Lakshmi Mukkavilli, MD of Patra India talks to Yo Vizag

Heading Patra India as Managing Director, Lakshmi Mukkavilli is also the Chairwoman of CII Indian women network, AP State and Vice Chairperson for IT Association of AP. She talks about leadership, initiative and progress with Jaya Siva Murty.

The inception

Having worked in the US for eight years, Lakshmi Mukkavilli returned to her hometown of Visakhapatnam after a short stint in Bangalore. When her previous boss John Simpson was looking for someone to help start the new venture of Patra Corporation in India, she emerged as an obvious choice. With the help of Murali Chirala and convincing the Founders John and Dan that Visakhapatnam was a better choice than Hyderabad, Matt Easterlin and Lakshmi started operations in 2005. With just four employees, the first couple of years involved outsourcing to a domestic company. They next began to set up Patracorp subsidiary offices in India and in 2007 August they started Patra India BPO Services Pvt Ltd in Visakhapatnam with 40 people. Looking back, she reflects that BPO, though a growing sector back then, focused more on tier 1 cities. “The decision to start in Visakhapatnam really paid off pretty well”, she adds.

Initial hurdles

After facing a hectic first year, where they struggled with infrastructure, training and other organisational issues, their journey improved. Lakshmi also faced a different working style in India as compared to the US. “There’s a difference in management style and protocol. While in the US, one is encouraged to come out with ideas, this isn’t the accepted norm out here.” Ensuring that the positive attributes of the US work-culture come to Patra, this organisation encourages people to come up with ideas, share information and be honest. “In India, people want to impress and so they say ‘yes we can do’, even if they can’t complete at a given date.” This used to be a challenge for Lakshmi, who focused on training her employees to always have a buffer plan. Language fluency was a hurdle too, as many people didn’t know English that well. Internet bandwidth, lack of trained personnel, state bifurcation and the Cyclone HudHud were setbacks, but they eventually sailed through it all.

With its focus on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for the insurance sector, Patra India today has three offices in India at Visakhapatnam, Bangalore and Raipur. Giving employment to over 2000 people, 70% being under 30 years of age, 42% of their employees are women. The organisation focuses on CSR too and supports many social causes.

Women in power

Expressing that issues like gender bias and workplace harassment need to be curbed everywhere, Lakshmi, today focuses on empowering women to be at par with men. For this, she encourages more women, especially mothers, to work. “I understand that women, especially mothers with very young children have bigger roles to play at home than men, but I tell them, to take a break and come back.” Stressing that, “A career gives you self-confidence and financial independence, which is very important for having better control over life”, she adds that kids have more respect for their mothers when they know that they are the financial decision-makers at home as well. Patra India has “Women Initiative” programmes and thus conducts regular talks, workshops, and motivational sessions. She adds, “For a country to flourish, more women should be in the career path. The amount of GDP of a country will grow only when more women start working.” Focusing on this through her role in the nationally recognised CII Indian women network, her work involves motivating women, and girls at the college level.

The future

While they started the BPO at Visakhapatnam at the right time, Lakshmi feels that success in the future depends on flexibility to adapt to changing culture and technology. “Currently there’s plenty of hype about Artificial Intelligence taking over, and even the IT sector is concerned.” While she doesn’t feel that things would change anytime soon, she says that even if they do, people won’t be rendered jobless. “More new jobs would come up, and so people must be aware of the market, and ride the wave of change by re-skilling themselves and adapting to the new technology. You can’t stay in your comfort zone”, she stresses. She also adds that companies should be disruptive and not be disrupted by change and work towards being relevant to the market instead, she adds.
With offices in the Tech Mahindra building as well, she describes Patra to be bullish in terms of growth. With aggressive expansion plans, this is a company that is ready for adapting to changes. With the focus on insurance sector right now, she expresses a willingness to diversify. Plans for expansion to tier II and perhaps tier III cities are on the anvil as well. The focus of the year 2020 is to show a total of 5000 employees. Having come this far and charting their growth into the future as well, Lakshmi Mukkavilli and Patra India are enhancing their visibility and that of the city as well.