CHENNAI: "If customer is king, collaboration is the only way to meet his aspirations in the flat world. For business, this means the ability to use talent and expertise wherever they may reside", S.Ramadorai, CEO and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services, told a gathering of management professionals in the US on Wednesday.

Delivering a speech at Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp's management meeting in Pebble Beach, Mr. Ramadorai said bringing together strengths of regions, like Chinese manufacturing, Indian software and European/US design to create products and services, viz, creation of a "collaborative eco-system all the way down the value chain", was a task in which investment companies could play a role.

TCS practised the concept by locating its media lab at Burbank, Los Angeles, automotive lab at Detroit and private bank lab in Luxembourg, he said.

Describing the India of today as a land of opportunity, Mr. Ramadorai said it attracted uninsured people from the US and Europe and high net worth individuals from the Middle East wanting to take advantage of its health tourism sector at one-sixth of US prices. It was emerging as a unique market where the flat world was helping the "creation of innovative products aimed at the bottom of the economic pyramid" — personal computers at $300, refrigerators built to survive voltage fluctuations and cars for $2,200. TCS's own technology was helping effective implementation of government programmes for the rural poor, and the country boasted of the cheapest mobile phones and call rates.

India was also probably the only big market where newspaper readership was growing in leaps and bounds and where first-time telephone users were cellphone users.

The Indian IT industry, however, needed to develop new employment relationships. It should help prepare students for the flat world, provide opportunities for internships and projects, encourage creativity and innovation in the class room and multi-disciplinary courses. All this called for greater-industry academia partnership, he added.

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