The Hindu : National : It’s advantage India: Infosys chief

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It’s advantage India: Infosys chief

Shanthi Kannan

Language, management skills will help it face competition from China, East Europe

Indian IT industry is creative in manpower management
It kept pace with the industry and technology growth

CHENNAI: India is advantageously positioned to take on China and East Europe in the IT (information technology) space, S. Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer, Infosys Ltd, asserted on Tuesday.

Interacting with journalists from The Hindu Group here, he said the Indian IT companies had matured in the last 30 years and their businesses had grown globally. Most of the companies had acquired financial strength and leadership capabilities. The project management skills of the IT companies and the English language skills of IT professionals would keep India in good stead vis-a-vis competition from China and East Europe, he said.

The Chinese firms had all the advantages Indian companies had. Like Indian firms, they too could scale up their operations. However, China was way behind in the language. Further, the Chinese firms focussed on the domestic market unlike Indian firms, which went in for international business. East European firms had scalability problem due to their low population growth, he said.

China and Eastern Europe had just got integrated with the global economy. For Indian IT companies this happened way back in the 1970s and they had grown along with the developed economies. The Indian IT industry had understood the businesses of these developed countries better than China and Eastern Europe, he pointed out.

Mr. Gopalakrishnan said the eco-system for IT was well established in India. So much so, India today was into application, services, design engineering, product design, chip design and consultancy. Also, companies like Infosys and i-Flex were delivering global products, especially in banking and payment gateways.

Two trends

The Infosys chief saw in the explosion of information and the need for transparency two mega trends that would impact the business. He expected these two trends to trigger the need for newer applications and solutions. Consequently, more investment would flow into the IT space. “Everything is getting intelligent and Internet-connected.” This would create a new set of applications and solutions, triggering significant investment in technology, he pointed out.

Apart from product innovation, the industry was creative in manpower management. It was a model where the development of skill set was done internally. “Providing training is a part of the financial model for the companies,” he pointed out. As such there was no extra cost needed for training.

Mr. Gopalakrishnan said the Indian IT industry had grown up in the value chain based on the requirement of customers. It kept pace with the industry and technology growth. This enabled the industry to grow and create an eco-system for itself and compete in the global market.

Flat guidance

As for the global meltdown, he said the industry had set a flat guidance for this year. He pointed out that customers were shrinking in size and cutting cost. But once the economy recovered, the industry would make a double-digit growth. However, he was doubtful if the industry would have a similar growth that it had in the peak period.

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