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A Tale of Two Billions

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Good Friday—2004 was aptly christened as "Feel Good Friday" by

Deepak Shikarpur, executive director of the Computer Society of India and one of

the doyens of Pune’s IT industry as he presided over a function organized to

felicitate Pune for crossing the billion dollar mark in software exports—a

stellar achievement for a city, which not so long ago seemed destined to be

consigned to the dustbin of also rans in the Indian software destination race.

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The story of Pune is in many ways a harbinger of what can and should happen

in at least a dozen other second tier cities in the country to fuel the second

phase of the IT and BPO revolution. A sleepy little town known more for its

Shrewsbury biscuits and Bhakarwadis, the Rajneesh Ashram and the Chitale Bandhu

sweet mart, Pune has finally discovered a way of monetising its triple strengths—an

excellent talent pool for IT services, excellent infrastructure for BPO and

ambitious Steve Jobs and Bill Gates wannabes that have set up many innovative

product development ventures in the city. With the expressway between Mumbai and

Pune making the knowledge corridor from Mumbai to Vashi to Pune a reality,

global giants like HSBC, WNS, AMDOCs and Convergys have joined the ranks of

Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Geometric and Zensar in making Pune the hub of their

expansion plans.

Ganesh

Natarajan
Success

in the new wave of IT will need the willingness to relinquish the old

tricks of the game and build new visions

While all the celebrations were happening in Pune, quite another

billion-dollar dream was becoming a reality as the Infosys story saw one more

chapter being written in their glorious history. With Wipro meeting and beating

this effort a few days later, it was not surprising to hear a BBC newscaster

leading with a story about Indian software companies being the only ones in the

world to show continually increasing market capitalization. A creditable

achievement that all of us who have worked long and hard for can be justifiably

proud of. And a loud hurrah for Dewang Mehta’s dream and Kiran Karnik’s

energy that have played such a major catalyst role in the success of this

industry.

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Speaking of Dewang, the city of Pune remembered him on his anniversary with a

brief but poignant ceremony where the industry’s irrepressible and passionate

son was eulogized.

There is no doubt today that the IT revolution is back on the fast track and

both domestic and international demand for high quality low cost software

products and services is set to grow steadily if not exponentially in the next

18 to 24 four months as the fear of terrorism subsides, global economies move

northward and customer demand picks up.

The next wave will see new drivers of growth emerge—Migration from Legacy

systems to J2EE and Dot Net platforms, enterprise application integration

through traditional tools like TIBCO, Web Methods, See Beyond etc as well as web

services which are making the second coming of the internet more powerful than

the force of the dot com bubble and value adding applications like data mining,

BI, KM and eLearning as organizations look for every possible method to capture,

store, disseminate and use information and knowledge about every stakeholder in

maximizing their conversion of business opportunities.

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There are opportunities galore but no place for the weak hearted! Success in

the new wave of IT will need the willingness to relinquish the old tricks of the

game and build new visions and new capabilities. There is a place for the big

firms but no place for copycats and smaller firms would be better served in

choosing and mastering a domain, technology or capability niche that is truly

best of breed and provides a unique value proposition in the chosen marketplace.

Finally, back to Pune and the infrastructure that is being made ready to

support the next wave of expansion. The Hinjewadi Software Park, which three

years ago was struggling to find its first tenants, is today bursting at the

seams. That’s the story of a city, which is now reaching for the stars!

The author is deputy chairman & managing director of Zensar Technologies

and chairman of Nasscom’s SME Forum for Western India ganesh@dqindia.com

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