But then, the comeback story is equally interesting. And it involves what critics call "desperate differentiation".

HCLT challenged the offshore status quo by looking at the business differently. Some of that distinction derives from the R&D roots of HCLT. Thus, the most challenging engineering services segmentaerospacegives HCLT its maximum revenue from that horizontal.

Its not just them. HCLI too has shifted gears and done things differently, several times. It moved strongly into distribution. When its services business was moved out to HCLT, it ramped up its telecom distribution. It shook up that market, and built Nokias fortunes in India, at one point getting three-quarters of its revenue from there, revenue far more profitable than was the norm in the distribution business. When it lost half the country as territory for its Nokia distribution business in FY06, it moved quickly into lifestyle products with Apple iPods, and others.

Both HCLI and HCLT inherit the old HCLs aggression, especially in sales; its relationship-based business, and, to a lesser extent, its cultivation of managerial talent. There was a time when every tech company starting India ops would look at HCL to hire a country manager.

But HCL was late in leveraging the groups size and strength. There was no common identity, no common website, till 2005. Neither Nadar nor Chowdhry (at the head HCLT and HCLI respectively) saw it as a group. Over the past two years, HCL has tried to change this using branding as a vital weapon. The groups efforts to portray itself as "One giant HCL" have now taken wing. Three major campaigns: "FEARless", "Zeroes and Ones" and "Tech Touching Lives" marked the groups efforts to move away from the local PC vendor image of. It also started an internal communication campaign across the entire HCL Enterprise. A group anthem and an online merchandise store were also launched.

There, is, however overlap in places, especially in HCL Comnet (an HCLT subsidiary where HCLT president Vineet Nayar comes from). Comnet, which does a fair bit of domestic business and holds a license for VSAT services in India, has strong synergies with the SI business of HCLI, even though it also gets a large chunk of revenue from remote infrastructure management for the global market.

HCLs top management is working to support this one HCL identity, though Nadar manages only HCLT (with Vineet Nayar, Ranjit Narasimhan, Saurav Adhikari and Anil Chanana) and Chowdhry, HCLI (with JV Ramamurthy and others). The two companies leverage some of each others forays. When HCLT participated in the Paris Air Show in June 07 with its own chalet (private pavilion) to showcase its aerospace expertise, HCLI officials went along and explored deals for distribution of ATC and avionics equipment in India. DQ

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