Too busy to make that personal call? Let the 'Bangalore butler' do it

In a new twist on outsourcing, an Indian company is offering busy executives in the west a 24/7 personal assistant at a cut-rate price.

Companies worldwide have already outsourced office work to India, but Asksunday is novel in offering a kind of 'Bangalore butler' - although the work is actually done in Hyderabad.

Asksunday provides remote assistance for people who are too busy to navigate endless menu options or dangle at the end of a phone line to get something done.

For US$29 a month, busy professionals can get a personal assistant at Asksunday instead. Most requests are dealt with in 30 minutes.

The service is the brainchild of American Steve Ludmer, who divides his time between India and New York, and investment banker Avinash Samudrala, who realised that busy people hated trivial tasks.

The requests are varied: booking a restaurant table, arranging a wake-up call, updating frequent flier accounts, calling a plumber, setting golf tee times, checking a flight's status, finding hotel rooms and researching digital camera prices.

'The Asksunday service is so simple to use. My wife thinks I am a superhero. She can't believe that I get so much done in a day. If only she knew,' one client commented on the firm's website.