Monday, March 5, 2001		Article

Giants woo Indian IT specialists
By Gagan Deep

The Indian IT industry grossed $ 5.7 billion last year, a 53 per cent increase in 1999. And, says the National Association of Software and Service Companies in India (Nasscom), 2001 looks set to be another boom year.

Foreign companies have been placing IT work in India for some time — General Electric has a call centre there, for example - and now companies are looking to India not only for the delivery of IT services but also for expertise in software engineering, consultancy and general Web-based technologies. The list of clients reads like a roll-call of international blue-chip operations - Merrill Lynch, the City Bank of New York,The Royal Bank of Scotland, International news agency Reuters, the British supermarket chain Tesco, Standard Chartered, AIG and the British insurance giant Prudential, as well as telecommunications giants Nokia and Qwest. All have sought the skills of software specialists in India.

So what’s happening in India and why are IT experts in such high demand? Competitive costs — in other words comparative cheapness — is certainly a factor but the key may be in the range of highly-skilled personnel available in India, apparently in inexhaustible supply. India’s prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee recently countered suggestions of an Indian IT brain-drain by boasting that for every ten skilled IT people leaving there were plenty more to be found in the country.

Asia’s largest independent software and services company, Tata Consulting Services (TCS), which reported a turnover of $ 500 million last year, says India can generate qualified engineering consultants who are adaptable, analytical and mathematically skilled. A. Laskshminarayan, TCS country manager for UK and Ireland, says that in an industry where obsolescence is a major threat, training is key to success.

Central and southern India are leading the sub-continent’s IT drive with Bangalore, where the city authorities offer incentives to attract foreign investment, and Hyderabad in the vanguard. But Bombay-based TCS also has centres at Delhi, Madras, Poona, and Calcutta.

While government ministers from the UK come knocking on India’s IT door, Indian IT companies are increasingly making their presence felt on the world stage. Ashok Sancheti, from UK and Indian based lawyers Morgan Walker, told ONS that he is presently handling three Indian acquisitions of British software conglomerates, with six more in the pipeline. India is proving a force to reckon with.