The Hindu : Up from the trough

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 10, 2003

Business

Business

Up from the trough

Long used to favourable `trade' currents, Indian IT had its share of squalls as well as shallows in the year gone by. Anand Parthasarathy was at the Bangalore IT.com event to catch the message `blowin' in the wind' for the industry.

IT WAS instructive to place two lists side by side last week and compare the entries. One was the list of participants at the annual Bangalore IT.com expo. The other was this year's DataQuest Top Twenty, still the most authoritative report card on the Indian infocom industry.

Of the top ten in the DQ ranking, only Satyam, ranked number 6, was present at the Bangalore event. TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HP, IBM all voted with their feet. Infosys and IBM were listed as sponsors, but it was not clear what form the sponsorship took. Of the next ten on the DQ list, only Moser Baer and CMC participated at IT.com. Things did not look much better as one went further down the DQ ranks. Indeed, the only brand name international IT companies which had a visible and substantial presence in Bangalore were power conditioning experts APC and AMD, the audacious chipmaking challenger to industry leader Intel (which was another largely invisible sponsor at IT.com).

So, with the big guys and a number of the middle guys missing, how representative would any message blowin, in the Bangalore wind be, of the industry as a whole? Fortunately, in technology as in more spiritual matters, power does not always flow from the big battalions -- and Bangalore brought out some pertinent lessons, showcased some worthy achievements and highlighted some truly innovative examples of Indian enterprise.

The global outsourcing industry was in sharp focus at a conference on the subject sponsored by Nasscom on the sidelines of IT.com. Traci Gere, Group Vice President (services) with IDC, the IT analysts, had the latest weather bulletin for the industry: The trough was reached some time in 2002 so things could only get better. Interestingly any global matrix of outsourcing players soon threw up Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys and TCS, alongside heavyweights like IBM, Accenture, EDS and the wild card, HP. But the message IDC had for all of them was: don't just do it cheap; do it better; do it differently.

A lesson for new entrants

Murali Vullanganti, Managing Director of Xansa, could probably give new entrants a few lessons on how this should be done. The company had begun delivering offshore services as early as in 1989 — when buzz words like BPO and ITES had not been invented; it was the first to achieve ISO 9001 "Tick IT'' certification in 1992 — and again, going against perceived wisdom, it boldy set up its biggest call centre — now 5000 plus strong — in Chennai, with other big groups in Noida and Pune. "A sensible geographic spread,'' Murali explained to this correspondent. Clearly he will not end up with pie on his face like the guys in New York, who thought offsite redundancy meant mirror sites in New Jersey — till this summer's blackout took both locations in its swathe.

Another IT.com participant, for whom bucking the trend came easy before breakfast, was Sarathi Srinivasan, President of the U.S.-based Spectrum Software. Their flagship product does something called Source Configuration Management (SCM) and the company's mantra is `buy once, use anywhere' — in other words, their customers are encouraged to use the basic product which helps control and manage e-assets across the IT spectrum, in any way they choose, no questions or hassles. Totally `open' and based on Java, Spectrum SCM has enabled hundreds of outfits, big to very small, to attain the developer's dream — a peaceful sleep at night without having to count sh-e-ep.

Every new edition of IT.com brings yet another new State to Bangalore, to display its e-governance initiatives — indeed this is one of the most fulfilling sections for any citizen who is concerned at how his or her taxes are spent. This year the States vying for attention included `hardy annuals' like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala and host Karnataka, as well as some recent bloomers like Chandigarh, Delhi, Orissa and Haryana.

A.P. showcased the upcoming Cyber Pearl techpark at Hitec City, a joint venture between L&T Infocity and the Singapore-based Ascendas (the latter also helped create and run Bangalore's International Tech Park). Gujarat has been quietly attracting investments which gave it a GDP that competes with Malaysia and Singapore.

Kerala, characteristically chose to showcase its daring e-literacy efforts, riding on the back of the nation's first district-wide wireless backbone. Karnataka could proudly claim that its Bhoomi land records automation was a model for the rest of the country. Chandigarh could tout its human development index: No. 1 in India; while Gurgaon was Haryana's `agni astra' — a neocity that is already the nation's call centre capital.

Orissa may yet emerge as the `dark horse' in the field, with many Indian and international companies opting for the quiet ambience of its capital area.

One government undertaking always uses the IT.com to unveil its latest product for the Indian language market: CDAC(Centre for Advanced Computing) this year had to offer its ambitious "C-Vyasa'' Sanskrit Authoring System for text to voice, hyperlinking and a host of other referencing applications.

Among major IT players, AMD had a 64-bit ace up its sleeve, and showcased PCs made by almost all the main Indian hardware players including HCL, Wipro and Zenith, with the new Athlon 64 chip under their hoods. Moser Baer reminded visitors that it was a respected name in digital media worldwide, even if the average Indian customer might not recognise the brand. That too was remedied: local retailers were selling hundreds of pieces of the company's CD packs including the new 40 MB mini format. APC which single handedly pushed entry level UPS price down to less than Rs. 3,000, was using the event to highlight its networked environment solutions.

Among foreign nations, Germany, Japan,the U.K., Singapore, Mauritius, Hong Kong and Japan showcased their IT muscle. Pragmatic Germany hosted some practical applications from Siemens, Vierling and others. After an extended winter of discontent through most of 2002, the spring of hope lies ahead. This was the prognosis that Phil Codling of the British research company, Ovum Holway, shared with nearly 100 Indian technology entrepreneurs at a sideline seminar on the U.K. investment scene. With budgets severely constrained, most large undertakings including publicly funded ones like health and criminal justice are under compulsion to `do more for less' — without compromising on quality. And this is where India came in... as the number one destination for U.K. corporations looking to outsource core operations.

But it is not always a `Passage to India' — some of the traffic moves in the opposite direction. Ian Graham of "Invest Northern Ireland'' pointed to HCL which, after its acquisition of Apollo Contact Centre two years ago, has doubled the workforce to 1,000 and become the largest call centre player in Ireland. And Mumbai-based Mastek, which has a long history of participation in British projects, has just completed the demanding job of putting in place the telecom networks that support the 5 pounds sterling daily charge levied on motorists coming into London.

Kelvin Green, Head of the British Trade Office in Bangalore, had a parting piece of advice for the potential BPO players from here: forge some relationships with existing outfits in the U.K. to get a foot in the door of the outsourced business. That might have been a blurb for the entire Indian lineup at the Bangalore IT.com event: `We've kicked the door open at last. World, here we come!'

Anand Parthasarthy

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