Government’s Goldfinger

ECIL (Electronic Corporation of India) started its operations way back in the
year 1967 with an aim to cater to the electronics needs of the vital defense
organization needs within the country. People from BARC came out and a committee
was appointed to form a body called ECIL. In the nineties the organization was
regarded as the ‘Government Goldfinger’ primarily because of its commendable
growth when compared to other IT players and its innovative approach towards
developing technologies.

"Approximately 300 scientists came out of BARC and formed ECIL with its
initial focus towards control in instrumentation and development of mission
critical sensors and other areas in the arena of electronics," remembers V
H Ron, chairman and MD, ECIL.

The Hyderabad-based public sector company has given India its first
indigenously developed computer. It has been providing the government and public
sector with IT-related solutions. For quite sometime the organization depended
on its own R&D with a few technical collaborations. But now with its foray
into the IT Education arena, the organization is now competing with the likes of
NIIT and Tata Infotech.

The organization was dogged by a number of sanctions imposed by the US and
its allies in the year 1998 and as a direct result of it, ECIL made losses of
about Rs 60 crore for the year 1999-2000. It is only now that the organization
is looking up for a big resurrection, primarily powered by a vision to provide
immunity for the country against any technological denial and there is no doubt
that it has become a mantra at ECIL today.

Determined to prove a point to the world community, the organization started
working on an all-indigenous model. For now immunity against technology denials
is the new mantra at ECIL as it has overgrown itself into a new entity with a
new focus towards creating knowledge wealth in the country.

As of now, the company is actively involved into education business with its
education division ECIT going in the forefront of IT education within the Indian
sub continent. It has an agreement with the Osmania University, Hyderabad for
undertaking students from the regular B-tech students with GATE for a training
program of one-year duration. The program is designed to help students get hands
on experience on different current technologies prevalent within the market.

"We are taking students for this program and about Rs 8000 will be given
every month as part of this initiative. We don’t think that we will have to
impose a bond agreement policy for a course like this though we will see that
the pass-out students work with us in R&D for two years," he said.

ECIL is also undertaking students at the BSc level and imparts training to
them giving them more knowledge in IT. The idea of the organization now is to
make sure that technical competencies graduate into other high skilled
competencies. "In today’s world of cutthroat competition we need to
upgrade our knowledge on a regular basis," he added.

This year ECIL is targeting to achieve more than Rs 750 crore as its
turnover. As the organization realigned itself with the current trends and tuned
into the market, things started to look pretty good and the organization has
orders worth more than Rs 1,000 crore. "We are now in a good position,
these orders range between long term (24 months) to short term (three months)
orders for various defense and government bodies. Moreover we are debt free
now," he explained.

An organization with a core focus towards defense and atomic research doesn’t
fit into an ideal model of an IT education organization, but yet it has its own
ECIT division dedicated towards imparting the education needs of the students
community. The organization has a training division of its own and when a need
for a separate IT division was felt, they decided to move into the IT education
segment.

Initially the organization restricted itself at imparting training only
either to ECIL employees or to its customers. With a network of more than 300
franchisee and 11 centers all over the country ECIT has trained more than 20,000
students for its short-term courses and about 5,000 students for its long-term
courses. And they are looking forward to creating more knowledgeable youngsters
in the near future!

Zia Askari / CNS in Hyderabad