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