Nasscom 2005: Harnessing innovation

The show must go on. Nasscom 2005, though having the usual run-of-the-mill
sessions, had attendees from all across the world and President Kalam's
thought provoking speech at the Valedictory function, coupled with IT minister
Dayanidhi Maran's call for rural initiatives, added glitter to the event.

Starting with the theme 'Innovation for Globalisation', Nasscom focused
on the issues of outsourcing and SMEs. The fast growing BPO industry was the
subject of discussion in almost every session, and drew a lot of attention among
both Indian and foreign delegates. For the first time, this event had a Global
Leadership Award and some new tracks like IT Innovation in India, Nasscom
Public-Private Partnership initiatives and the Special Session Track. There were
also global CIOs who shared international best practices and their experiences
in the global market. There were focused tracks on IT usage by BFSI, the Telecom
sector and the Government, apart from sessions on the global economic landscape,
globalization strategies, best practices for outsourcing deals, evolving
contours of the global delivery model, mergers and acquisitions in the IT
sector, opportunities for innovation in India and IT consulting.

IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran lights the lamp

The conference had some high profile speakers. Prominent among them were the
President of India APJ Abdul Kalam, Minister for Communication and IT Dayanidhi
Maran; Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh, and Industry head honchos
like S Ramadurai, CEO, TCS; Narayanamurthy, chairman and chief mentor, Infosys;
Azim Premji, chairman and MD, Wipro; Hienrich V Pierer, chairman, supervisory
board Siemens AG and Stephen Green, chairman, HSBC Bank. The three-day seminar
was packed with more than 1300 delegates, as the speakers covered many
interesting industry related topics.

HSBC Bank's Stephen Green (left) holds on to the Global Leadership award presented by Kamal Nath

After cricket, it was Nasscom that proved to be another equally powerful
binding force in bringing India and Pakistan closer. Three Pakistani IT
companies forged alliances with their Indian counterparts-i-flex Solutions
partnered with Karachi-based Emmaculate Solutions to foray into the Pakistan
financial sector market (This is the first tie-up between any Indian and
Pakistani IT company and is expected to pave way for many more such deals);
Spanco Telesystems and Solutions India tied-up with Karachi based Millennium
Software to set-up a call center in Pakistan and Delhi-based Compare Infobase
tied up with Karachi-based e-business solution company Creative Chaos to jointly
develop and launch portals for the Pakistan market. With this, Nasscom 2005
emerged as the biggest forum for cross-border business ties between the two
nations.

Kalam's call

President Kalam's address was highly appreciated. Most of the delegates
were stunned by and immensely impressed with the Presidents' knowledge and
acumen about the IT industry. He urged the Indian IT industry to aim for 15% of
the business world's market in IT service, ITeS and BPO by 2009-the market
for which currently stands at $1.2 tn. He interacted with CEOs and members of
the Nasscom Executive Council in Mumbai through video conferencing from
Rashtrapati Bhavan, during the Valedictory function.

President APJ Abdul Kalam spoke to Nasscom through video conferencing

The President said that the mission for making India a developed country by
the year 2020, is not only about getting added revenues from agriculture and
industry but ialso about increasing income through knowledge intensive products.
Kalam asked the CEOs present to take this up as a challenge and was confident
that it was achievable as risk takers always win.

Jehan Ara, chief of Pasha (Pakistan's 'Nasscom') came back to India with a delegation, for the second year

He said he was confident that goal will be achieved because the system is
contributing over two million graduates every year, including Egineering
graduates. He said, "This is a vital resource needed for growth in IT
Services, ITeS and BPO. Now what is needed is infrastructure establishments such
as IT parks, including call centers in large numbers, for providing the services
which can be established by the country's cash rich IT companies and the state
governments". He also said, "We should aim at increasing the knowledge
pool in IT to five million Indian youth by the year 2008, which will enhance the
existing efficiency by the factor of two".

The President felt that there was a need to attain self-reliance in the
infrastructure software sector with knowledge products, where the domain
applications could be developed and deployed for the services sector. He also
said that to achieve competitiveness, along with research results, an effective
triangle of industries, researchers from academia, R&D and the student
community should be created to develop innovative products.

Minister speak

In his keynote, earlier, Minister for Communication and IT, Dayanidhi Maran,
said that there is need to invest in IT education at the grass root level.
"Taking IT to the masses should bridge digital divide and since India is a
multi lingual country, software companies need to make cost-effective
applications in different Indian languages," he added. He also said,
"There are still a host of areas that require our undivided attention,
major pieces in the ICT industry puzzle that need to fit in and a significant
number of market segments where our industry still needs to stake a claim and
strengthen its credentials".

The rise of Shinsei Bank was helped by Indian IT Flextronics CEO Michael Marks flexes his manufacturing muscles

Speaking about the Internet penetration in India, Maran said it needs to grow
by leaps and bounds. Currently, Internet growth in India is limited by low PC
penetration, which, in turn, is inhibited by the high prices of computer
hardware. The government is working closely with the industry to ensure that PC
costs come down rapidly and Internet access devices are within the reach of
ordinary citizen.

Industry lookout

NR Narayanmurthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys hit hard on call
centers and said that they would become obsolete once voice-recognition
techniques are perfected, and this is unlikely to happen in software.

Narayana Murthy casually dropped a bombshell predicting the death of call centres Premji extolls virtues of the Indian education system

Speaking about smaller IT companies he said that today finance is not such a
problem as there is greater opportunity to source it. What smaller companies
need to do is to zero in on niche areas and on areas where big companies have
not yet focused. "The industry today depends too much on the five big
companies; of the $16.3 bn revenue this year, 60% came from the top five. This
is risky. Smaller companies can adapt better to the market and specialize.

India has an edge over others in IT. Azim Premji, chairman and MD, Wipro
described it on three factors: "First, is the respect for knowledge-Indian
companies have leveraged on this strength of the Indian culture; Second is the
educational rigour-Indian professionals go through the grind of a competitive
educational system from nursery to professional education and the hustle and
bustle of corporate life, our society has become adept at filtering talent
progressively; and the Third is the tolerance for ambiguity".

For the first time, Nasscom introduced Global leadership awards and
felicitated some prominent personalities. The Award for Innovation in Business
was presented to Dr Heinrich V Pierer, chairman of the Supervisory Board of
Siemens. The Award for Excellence as a "Business Leader" was given to
Stephen Green, chairman, HSBC Bank. Craig Barrett, CEO, Intel Corporation
accepted the award for Creativity, and Masamoto Yashiro received the award for
Excellence in IT Usage. Carly Fiorina, former chairman and CEO, Hewlett Packard,
got the award for her vision.

Rahul Gupta

IT Minister Pledges for More

Dayanidhi Maran

Minister of Communications & IT Dayanidhi Maran expressed his views on
issues related to the Indian IT and telecom industry on the sidelines of Nasscom

On national IT policy formulation

We have already asked to submit recommendations regarding that. The process
is going on but it's too early to comment on the timeline for that. We would
like it to be business viable and the policy formulation would be done in such a
way that it should not hurt, and rather support, both the software and the
hardware industry. It's imperative and would be done soon.

On the status of the BSNL-MTNL merger

We have asked BSNL, MTNL, and ICICI and other bankers to submit their
recommendations by March this year. We would then decide whether we should go
for it or not. It's premature to comment on when this merger would happen.
Since both the organizations operate in different parts of the country, merger
would definitely add value to their operational efficiencies.

On the IT Act review committee

Brijesh Kumar heads the IT Act review committee and very soon the committee
would submit its recommendations. After that we would see what needs to be done.
We have now made sure that nothing untoward should happen to any IT company
after the recent happenings, and we would also see that the law is placed
properly to ensure that cases like Baazee should not happen again.

On zero duty

Since zero duty regime would come into effect from April this year, we want
to make sure that Indian IT manufacturers are not at a disadvantage. The
zero-duty regime would definitely invite more manufacturing set-ups and we see
huge price drop in all hardware equipment. That would eventually make an impact
on all the industries related to it.

On broadband services up to block level

We already have around 1,20,000 bookings so far and we see huge upsurge in
these in the days to come. I wish to see broadband penetration happening at all
levels, that would make an impact on the Internet industry as a whole.
Interesting applications will have to be developed to ride this broadband wave;
that would enable digital empowerment.

On steps for manpower development in the ITeS/BPO sector

Yes, we have taken cognizance of the fact that the development of manpower
is very important. And that has to be developed from the school level itself.
This is a huge effort, as this initiative would have to work in close
coordination with the state governments. We must also remember and see in
perspective how the software sector has surged ahead on its own by getting its
own training in the private sector.