Indian IT firms see return of hiring, salary hikes

Many were predicting six months back that the Indian IT industry would be entering its twilight zone, but now there are indications that these predictions may go wrong. Several IT companies have restarted hiring and are giving salary hikes to their employees.

"That phase of drastic downturn is behind us," says S Ramadorai, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). "There's stability now. The deal pipeline is encouraging, but the time it takes to close a deal remains long. And many customers are yet to fully open up their IT budgets," Ramadorai added.

While IT majors like TCS, Wipro and Cognizant have started promotions and salary hikes, Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Managing Director of Infosys feels that things are looking better now, however the company prefers to wait and watch before giving any promotions or hikes, reports The Economic Times.

The recovery of the defamed Satyam Computer Services under the new owner Mahindra Satyam has also proved to be a boon for nearly 28,000 employees across all levels, with the restoration of the variable pay. The variable component is 10 percent at the entry level, 20 percent at the middle level and 30 percent at the senior management level. IT bellwether Wipro has lifted its freeze on hikes and promotions, at least for some employees.

Manpower supply company TeamLease, which saw its open positions drop significantly from 10,000 a month to 800 post-recession, has in the past couple of months seen those numbers rise to 3,500.

With the current trend companies have also started showing more confidence in the Indian market. Information infrastructure company, EMC has announced that it will invest $1.5 billion in India over the next five years, a level of investment from a single company that the sector has not seen in close to two years. Partha Iyengar, Regional Research Director in Gartner India, says the number of calls the company gets from customers for directions and consulting has gone up sharply in the last 3-4 months.

The Indian IT industry was one of the worst hit by the recession on account of its dependence on international markets - especially the U.S. and European markets. The freeze on IT budgets by companies around the world meant that new orders dried up. Industry association Nasscom initially forecast that IT exports would grow by 22-24 percent in 2008-09, but as the recession deepened, this was revised down to 16 percent. For this fiscal, the association has projected a 4-7 percent growth to $48-50 billion.

Agencies

Indian IT cos eye Japanese outsourcing biz

After neutralising their mother-tongue accent and mastering the American drawl, Indian geeks are busy learning Japan’s Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana symbols.

Reason: The recession is eating into the volume of outsourced IT work from the US; and after the US, Japan is an important market from the IT perspective, more so during the current period.

Take the case of Suman Reddy Ragidi, a business analyst of Cognizant. Japanese language training has enabled her to converse with clients both in formal as well as informal situations.

“The training has also made it easier for me to understand all project documentation written in Japanese,’’ says Reddy Ragidi. On its part, Cognizant runs foreign language training in its offices and its mandatory for employees to enroll in such language courses.

“Language is an important aspect of culture and such training is helpful in everyday communication. Importantly, employees are able to articulate their viewpoints to clients,’’ says K Venkataraman, director of Cognizant.

The Japanese IT services market is valued at $108 billion, according to a recent survey by Nasscom and Pricewaterhouse-Coopers. India has bagged only 13 per cent of this offshoring pie. Moreover, demand for software is primarily driven by the BFSI (banking, financial, services and insurance) and manufacturing companies which consume 42 per cent of the total IT services.

Another Chennai-based IT player Infoview Technologies, whose business comes fully from Japanese majors, is making sure its employees know Japanese symbols by heart. Around three-fourth of the company’s employees have learnt the language and the top management team which accounts for 10 per cent of the workforce has reached the ‘near native level’ in terms of mastering the language.

The company also recently launched an online Japanese learning software for beginners in India. JWEIC is developed by WEIC Corporation, a Japanese company that is into production and sales of e-learning language and learning management systems. Infoview, which has the rights to sell the software in India and Singapore, is targeting executives and college students alike for the online course. It is targeting 10,000 learners during the first year.

Similarly, Noida-based Nucleus Software which generates half of its revenues from Japan is encouraging its employees to learn the language. “Right now, we are utilising the services of interpreters and translators,’’ says chief executive and managing director, Vishnu Dusad.

For Indian IT entrepreneurs like Chandrasekaran of Infoview Technologies and Dusad of Nucleus the lure for doing business with ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’ is the importance that the Japanese place to long-term relationships. “It’s tough to crack the market initially,” says Cheran Chandrasekaran, CEO, Infoview Technologies.

Source: Times of India