In the late 1990s Indian entrepreneur Pramod Bhasin had an idea: why couldn't English speaking Indians answer the customer calls coming into US businesses on the other side of the world and charge a fraction of the price of home grown services.

Mr Bhasin set up India's first call centre in 1998 with just 18 employees taking calls in an office where the booths were divided by saris hanging from the ceiling.

Today, although India faces stiff competition from countries such as the Philippines, its call centre industry is still huge and employs hundreds of thousands of Indians.

Pramod Bhasin spoke to Witness about his ground-breaking business.

Witness is a World Service programme of the stories of our times told by the people who were there.