Nandini Devi, 21, is an oddity in the spit-and-polish world of India’s outsourcing firms where posh accents, a Western orientation and superior technical skills are the standard. Nandini is a 12th standard pass and her English is halting. She is more comfortable in the local Kannada language. She has no software or technical skills to speak of. But in a sign that the back office industry is expanding beyond what is popularly perceived, Nandini and 700 others like her, all from modest families, have stepped into the rarefied world of outsourcing in Bangalore, India’s technology capital.

In the Whitefield suburbs, in a shiny red and glass-fronted building carrying the sign ‘Scancafe’, Nandini is a team supervisor. Scancafe is on online service which delivers high quality scans and processed digital images of old photographs or negatives to Western customers. Its scanning facility, now the world’s largest, is located in Bangalore. From the Scancafe hub in San Francisco, pictures received from individuals, libraries, museums, galleries and the wedding photography industry, are shipped out to Bangalore through large, heavy-duty freight containers.

Nandini joined Scancafe to tide over a dire domestic financial crisis when her father died of a sudden illness just as she was finishing school. She now takes home a five-figure paycheck comparable to call centre salaries, puts household money in the hands of her mother and backs her brother through school. “My relatives and neighbors are admiring that I financially support my family,” she says. Nandini’s story echoes many times over in Scancafe.

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