INFOTECH INDIA | Tech Briefs: DECEMBER 2010
UIDAI Issues 100,000th Aadhar Number
Nasscom for Flexi Working Hours for Women
Indian ICT Spending to Grow 10.3 Percent
GOOGLE: New Call Center
BLACKBERRY: Income Tax Goes Hi Tech
INFOSYS: US Hiring
Marketing Online
WIPRO: Reinventing Itself?
MphasiS: $1B Firm
Overseas Strength
UIDAI Issues 100,000th Aadhar Number
The Unique Identification Authority of India issued its 100,000th Aadhar number as part of the government’s ambitious project to give all citizens of the country a unique identity number.
Lakshmamma from Tumkur in Karnataka received the 100,000th Aadhaar number.
"Crossing one lakh enrollments in this short span of time is a welcome milestone for us," Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the UIDAI, said in a statement.
"And the credit for this goes far beyond the UIDAI team. A lot of people — state government officials, the enrolling agencies, as well as the UIDAI team, its TDU (Technology Development Unit), PMU (Project Management Unit), sabbatical resources and volunteers are working together, and put in substantial effort towards getting the enrolments done."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had Sept. 29 issued the first Aadhaar number to Ranjna Sadashiv Sonwane, a tribal woman from Tembhali village in Nandurbar, Maharashtra.
The UIDAI plans to issue 600 million Aadhaar numbers in the next four years to citizens.
"Over these last six weeks, the UIDAI has rapidly ramped up enrolments for the Aadhaar number across seven states — Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra," the statement said.
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Nasscom for Flexi Working Hours for Women
 Infotech industry group Nasscom has said it favored a flexible work atmosphere for women engaged in raising their family to curb drop-out rates and boost their numbers in mid-level and senior management positions.
National Association of Software and Services Companies’ chairman Harsh Manglik said one of the major issues facing the IT-BPO industry was that women wanted to raise their families at some stage.
He stressed that while women accounted for about 30 percent of the industry’s workforce, the number of those rising to mid- and senior-level positions needs to accelerated.
Nasscom officials said that overall, there were 600,000 women working in the IT-BPO industry in India today.
Manglik observed that the “biggest barrier” is that once women take a break and come back to the profession after a few years, they find the work atmosphere “intimidating,” as they feel “outdated” and “disconnected,” and left behind in technology competency.
“But one major gap still remains. We still have less than 4 percent women as CEOs and CXOs in our industry. Where do the women disappear? Let’s explore this,” Sucharita Eashwar, senior director, Nasscom, said at the beginning of the two-day event.
She said the shared child-care services model in IT hubs has worked well and has addressed the major reason why women drop out when they are mid-way in their careers.
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Indian ICT Spending to Grow 10.3 Percent
The country's information and communication technology spending is expected to reach $71.9 billion, a 10.3 percent jump in 2011, as against $65.23 billion this year, global research firm Gartner said.
Hardware is the fastest growing segment with a compounded annual growth rate growth seen at 20.4 percent by 2014, the research firm said.
IT services are showing the strongest annual revenue growth at 22 percent in 2010, while the telecom segment that is expected to account for 73 percent of the Indian ICT market in 2010, is witnessing a slowdown and is set to grow at 13.2 percent, Gartner said.
The research firm said double-digit growth across all sub-segments of the ICT space will drive growth this year.
"IT spending in India saw somewhat of a slowdown as a result of the global economic recession through much of 2009. The overriding major theme across companies in India last year was better utilization of existing resources and driving efficiencies of infrastructure," Gartner's senior vice-president and global head of research Peter Sondergaard told reporters.
"While many companies adopted a cautionary approach in 2009, a strong return to growth has been seen in 2010, due in part to pent-up demand following budget slowdown in 2009, the need to replace or add hardware and the massive consumer segment-driven growth across many industries," he said.
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GOOGLE: New Call Center
 Google India has announced the launch of a new call center in Hyderabad that will provide regional language support to small and medium enterprises (in India for its AdWords platform .
It would offer support in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam and manage both inbound and out bound calls to help SMEs to learn how to manage advertising campaigns online and grow their businesses by using Google's advertising platform AdWords, it said in a statement.
With this additional facility, Google India would now provide support in six languages, including Hindi and English.
Google also announced the launch of a new learning and training program called 'Google Engage' which, it said, is designed to help individuals and businesses engaged in offering web-related services to customers locally.
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BLACKBERRY: Income Tax Goes Hi Tech
 The Income Tax department has struck an estimated Rs 500 million deal with state-owned telecom company BSNL to provide 51,000 mobile connections and 1,000 high-end Blackberry phones for secure and fast communication among its officers and staff.
The department’s new telecom kitty, formulated to help I-T officials to enhance their speed of communication for official work, has a heavy shopping list with the joint network of BSNL and MTNL.
This provides for the supply of 51,000 mobile connections, 22,000 landline connections, 8,000 3G data cards with 5 GB download per month, 1,000 BlackBerry phones, 5,000 broadband connections and unlimited free SMS facility to the entire network of BSNL/MTNL. The department has provided the latest BlackBerry Torch model, sporting a price tag of around Rs 30,000 per piece, to all the chief commissioners and commissioners of income tax in the country to ensure fast monitoring of operations and activities of the department and keep secure all classified information exchanged between the top brass.
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INFOSYS: US Hiring
 Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest software exporter, will hire more local citizens in the U.S. to overcome the risks from changes in the nation’s visa policy, said chief executive officer S. Gopalakrishnan.
“We’re looking to hire more people in the U.S. so that it becomes easier for us to do consulting kind of work,” said Gopalakrishnan in an interview in Seoul.
India’s software services companies that win outsourcing contracts need U.S. visas as some customers ask for on-site staff to work as coordinators and provide technical support. Pending immigration legislation in the U.S. Congress includes a bill that makes it harder for employers to obtain the skilled worker visas by adding new requirements, fees and penalties.
Infosys’ target is to hire 250 U.S. citizens each quarter as a short-term solution to possible policy changes, said Gopalakrishnan. In the long-term, the company plans to reduce its dependence on the North American market, he said.
Infosys is looking to lower its share of revenue from the U.S. to 40 percent of its total sales from 65 percent by increasing business from other regions, he said. The Bangalore-based company aims to raise the portion of revenue generated from emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico and China to 20 percent from about 12 percent, said Gopalakrishnan.
“We’re also investing into emerging markets, like China, Brazil, Mexico, the Middle East, India, so we’re diversifying our portfolios to include emerging markets,” he said.
Nasscom, the group representing Indian software companies such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, has been lobbying against the legislation that aims to make it harder for non-U.S. citizens to obtain work visas to enter the country. The industry body met with President Barack Obama during his visit to India earlier to lobby their case.
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Marketing Online
Social networking sites are beginning to change the face of business in a digitized India with companies adopting a marketing mix of online campaigns, promotions in print, television as well as road shows to reach out to people.
With nearly 10 million people accessing the internet in India out of nearly 650 million users globally, companies are sensing immense possibilities on social networks, said Gaurav Mishra, digital and social media director at the MS&L Group Asia.
"We are seeing more and more brands doing their marketing through word of mouth and social networking sites than advertising," said Mishra, who helps global brands benefit from social intersection site Social Squared.
Any brand can make its presence felt in the social networking space and create a buzz-feedback chain at minimal cost, reaching out to the widest spectrum of tech-savvy buyers.
Recall Pepsi Refresh? In January, Pepsi launched a super $20 million Pepsi Refresh campaign on the social media to reach out to 250,000 (cached) Facebook fans compared to Coke's four million.
It is targeting Indian users with social responsibility and gender campaigns on the Internet.
One of the most successful Indian social brand positioning campaigns is the Sunsilk Gang of girls which began as a promotional exercise for the pageant in 2002 and later turned into a community platform with chats, networkings and blogs for the girls to share beauty tips.
Starbucks, the coffee company, tells its nearly 10 million virtual consumers across the globe to "share, vote, discuss and see" what they want on its social networking space.
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WIPRO: Reinventing Itself?
 Wipro officials, proud of their company’s heritage and success, have perhaps never experienced anything like this: A feeling of restlessness and a sense of dissatisfaction. Revenue growth, compared with peers, has been anemic; at times Wipro comes out second best in head-to-head matchups when it comes to winning and keeping some clients.
In danger of conceding the position of third-biggest software exporter to Cognizant, Wipro is now trying hard to reinvigorate itself.
For Rishad Premji, 33, Wipro’s new chief strategy officer, the latest assignment poses challenges far beyond that of ensuring that the company regains growth by breaking into large customers. The task now is to fend off rivals such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Cognizant from taking a lion’s share of common clients.
“We look at growth of peers like Cognizant and that amazes us. But if we do not move now, Wipro will give away its spot to Cognizant, just the way Infosys overtook us almost a decade ago,” said a company official who requested anonymity.
Since 2004, Wipro has trailed peers on revenue growth, except last year when the company’s lesser exposure to the banking sector helped it perform better than rivals. “It’s kind of a crossroads, but fortunately we also know what route to take,” said one of the senior executives at Wipro.
“There’s a plan to gain more mindshare of customers and we will come back within the next few quarters,” said one of the senior executives at Wipro who requested anonymity. Exactly 10 years after Infosys overtook Wipro as India’s second-biggest software exporter, Cognizant is threatening to repeat that in the next few quarters.
“I remember that sometime in October of 2000, some of us were getting restless about Infosys taking the lead. Looks like it’s all getting repeated,” said a former Wipro executive.
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MphasiS: $1B Firm
 MphasiS, the first among Indian mid-tier software services firms to achieve billion-dollar revenues, said higher volumes from owner Hewlett-Packard, apart from acquisition of smaller firms, will help the company double its revenues from $1 billion-plus right now.
MphasiS, which follows a November to October fiscal year, said revenues for the year ended October grew by 18 percent to 5,037 crore and net profit improved by 20 percent to Rs 909 crore.
“It took us 12 years to get to our first billion dollars. We hope to reach the second sooner than that,” said Ganesh Ayyar, CEO of MphasiS.
“If you analyze the market, you will see that mid-tier companies typically get stuck in the $500 to $700 million range. The good news is that we have broken through that barrier.”
The company also announced restricted stock options of 10 shares for each of its staff. With $369 million in cash, and having made two acquisitions in the past few months, MphasiS wants to grow faster than its peers.
“In 2008, we had $12 million in cash and have made two acquisitions since. We are looking for acquisitions and if there are good companies out there, we want to talk to them,” he said. Meanwhile, with around 70 percent of business coming in from HP, some analysts are worried. “HP renegotiates rates every six months, and pressure from such a large customer is a concern,” said a Mumbai-based analyst of a brokerage firm.
MphasiS, however, says business from HP has actually helped the company, especially during last year, when new business was hard to come.
“I could change the ratio by slowing down growth of the HP business, but that does not help MphasiS or our shareholders. We are acutely aware of the client concentration risk, but do remember that out of the 70 percent, only 10 percent is of HP as a customer.”
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Overseas Strength
Mumbai-based BPO company Aegis has more employees overseas (27,000) than in India (20,000). Its operations are spread across ten countries, from the U.S. and Argentina through Kenya and South Africa to Australia. 24/7 Customer has 3,000 employees in India, and 6,000 overseas, in countries like the Philippines, China, Guatemala and Nicaragua. And many other BPO companies are headed in the same direction — setting up a combination of onshore, nearshore and offshore centers.
In BPO parlance, onshore refers to a location very close to the customer location, nearshore may be in a neighboring country, and offshore at a distant location.
The traditional offshoring model of BPO is changing fast as customers look for global delivery platforms. Previously, it was often called a “lift and shift” model. You lift a certain process and shift it to a low-cost destination like India or the Philippines.
Now, BPO firms say they are under pressure to set up part of the operations close to customer locations to work closer together and also to avoid charges about job losses in the home country. Keshav Murugesh, group CEO of BPO major WNS, says customers today are focused on working with partners who are knowledgeable about their business.
“They want providers to interact with them closely. So it is about knowing the clients’ business better, understanding the domain better and actually helping them with their topline and bottomline. We can’t just say we are going to take the work and move it to some developing country; it has to be a combination of onshore and offshore,” he says.
Raman Roy, MD of Quatrro BPO Solutions, echoes that: “Customers today want to outsource 100 percent of their processes, over 60 percent done onshore or nearshore and the rest done offshore.”
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