Covid-19 Impact: BPM Firm Startek CEO To Forgo Cash Salary For 2020

Startek, a business process management firm which merged with India’s Aegis in 2018, said its CEO Aparup Sengupta will forgo any cash salary for the remainder of 2020 as part of the company’s plan to mitigate the financial impact from the disruption caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

This makes it one of the first companies in the IT-BPM sector whose CEO have decided to not take salary.

“Our top priority continues to be the health and safety of our employees and we’ve implemented key measures to maximize our operations and efficiency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Sengupta. “We are continuously enabling employees to work-from-home after obtaining requisite client approvals. We are aligning our workforce to match with the current revenue levels and also managing our operating costs with an emphasis on minimizing disruption to our global business operations,” he added.

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In an interaction with Business Standard on Wednesday, Infosys chief operating officer and new Nasscom Chairman UB Pravin Rao said the BPM industry in India “has done extremely well in terms of managing the situation. They have been able to enable WFH, where our clients have given permission. the rest have been coming to work to ensure business continuity with minimal disruption.”

As part of its business continuity planning, Startek has allowed most of its employees to work from home, is cutting all non-essential spending and capital expenditures and is having continuous discussions with lenders to restructure debt.