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.
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.
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.
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