Esse artigo trata do esforco nacional sendo feito pela India para se tornar um dos grandes provedores de servicos para a area de tecnologia.
O presidente da National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), Kiran Karnik disse que: ``I want to promote the India Inc brand abroad. I want to make India and IT as synonymous as France and wine or Switzerland and watches.'' A India eh um pais com economia e condicoes similiares a do Brasil, e possui hoje apenas uma pequena fatia (1.6%) do mercado mundial de inform�tica. Ainda assim, a India eh vista como possuindo um grande potencial de crescimento no mercado. Eh claro que nos, brasileiros, teriamos condicoes de nos tornarmos ainda mais representativos no mercado mundial do que a India. Basta querermos. Bruno. ______________________________________________________________________ Bruno Peres Ferreira de Souza Brazil's JavaMan http://www.javaman.com.br mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] if I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe Date: 17-02-02 Source: REUTERS Subject: India Inc Battles Image Problem BOMBAY - The land of technology gurus selling top-end software to global companies, or a land of snake charmers? Indian tech tycoons spend a lot of time these days wondering if the country has an image problem. After growing seven fold in seven years, the $13.5 billion Indian information technology (IT) industry has suddenly found reason to question whether it's becoming a victim of its own success. Too few foreign customers have heard of Indian IT firms, some with multi-million-dollar sales, and those who have expect cheap rates undermining efforts of the country's top-end players, those in the industry say. ``India has sold itself short as a supplier of low-cost services,'' said R Ravisankar, the chief executive of i-flex Solutions Ltd, one of India's few IT products companies. Most Indian IT companies provide cheap computer maintenance services to companies abroad -- a low-margin segment where rates are under pressure because of the global slowdown in IT spending. Greater competition is expected as countries like China enter the market. A recent study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co predicts Chinese software service companies will be able to offer the same skills for 15-20 percent less in two to three years. ``China is very serious about IT and intends to build a robust software industry in a few years, making it competitive globally,'' said Nandan Nilekani, managing director of Infosys Technologies Ltd, India's second-largest software services exporter whose annual sales run at more than $500 million. VALUE CHAIN To cope, Indian IT industry can move up the value chain, leveraging its technical talent, business contacts and expertise to carve out new business domains, analysts said. But in trying, Indian IT entrepreneurs complain they are handicapped by the persistent image of India as ``a land of snake charmers,'' and its IT industry as synonymous with cut-rate grunt work. ``As soon as I walk in, they (foreign customers) think they're going to get it 30-percent cheaper because I'm Indian,'' a European investment banker recalls one executive complaining. And when India Inc goes after new business, it also finds even its biggest IT companies are still unknown abroad. ``Even companies like Infosys (India's second-largest software service exporter) don't seem to be in more than 50 percent of the deals because customers are not aware of their services lines and what they can do,'' said Gautam Kumra of McKinsey & Co. The industry, though, thinks it has a solution to overcome these hurdles. It wants to virtually copyright the name ``India Inc,'' and make it synonymous with software services. ``I want to promote the India Inc brand abroad,'' Kiran Karnik, the president of National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), an info-tech industry association, told Business Week magazine last month. ``I want to make India and IT as synonymous as France and wine or Switzerland and watches. MASSIVE POTENTIAL MARKET Pipe dream? Not when you start toting up the global opportunities soon to unfold due to the revolution in communications. To remain competitive, companies around the world are shifting many back-office operations to cheaper service providers overseas, particularly to India. ``We believe that India is on the cusp of an offshoring wave,'' McKinsey principal Noshir Kaka said last week in unveiling the major findings of a study carried out with NASSCOM. ``There is a dramatic increase in the willingness and intent to do business in India,'' Kaka said. ``Not only in number of customers coming, but the kind of services and size of deals.'' Over 75 percent of the global top 40 IT companies were setting up or building operations in India, McKinsey said. Drawing these companies to India is the deepest pool of software talent anywhere. An estimated 158,000 new IT professionals entered the Indian labor market just last year. Rookie software engineers make as little as 10,000 rupees ($205) a month, and most are English-speaking. NEW MARKETS That reservoir of cheap talent puts India in a position to stake out claims to big chunks of new IT service markets. One area is IT-enabled services: telemarketing, help desk support, medical transcription, insurance claim and credit card processing -- any service which can be delivered via phones, computers and the Internet. Business process outsourcing, R&D and Internet-related services are together forecast to be worth more than $200 billion by 2005. Another promising area is providing enterprise application integration services. Over the years, companies have spent fortunes installing computer systems and software applications to run their businesses. Now companies are spending even more to get those systems to communicate. Internet research firm Forrester estimates that the top 3,500 global firms will spend $22 billion on integration software and services both this year and next. In all, global spending on IT services is projected to increase to $691 billion by 2004, up from $467 billion in 2000. Indian companies' share of the global market now stands at a tiny 1.6 percent, as they are engaged in areas that account for only 12.6 percent of the entire market, according to Alfred Elbrick, a Deutsche Bank tech investment expert. Yet even that little slice has spawned some big companies. At least three Indian IT companies are expected to top $1 billion in annual revenue in the next three years, according to the NASSCOM. ======================================================================== Essa noticia foi disponibilizada para voce por: Rob Creemers Martien van Steenbergen Bruno Ferreira de Souza Oferecimento: Sun Microsystems Summa Technologies www.sun.com www.summa-tech.com ======================================================================== --------------------------------------------------------------------- Para cancelar a subscri��o, envie mensagem para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Para comandos adicionais, envie mensagem para: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
