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Nasscom and the Art of ‘Feel Good’ Creation

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The annual industry extravaganza that NASSCOM organizes every year with so

much pomp and aplomb was just that this February — an extravaganza, where the

who’s who of India’s Software industry rubbed shoulders with country

delegations by the dozen, think tanks from the US, everybody that matters from

the industry research community and of course, key customers willing to share

experiences and learn from the latest developments in an industry that never

stands still.

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The sessions this year were kicked off by an excellent keynote by UK minister

Stephen Timms, whose diverse portfolio of e-commerce and power may have raised

some eyebrows, but whose passionate argument in favour of free trade won him

many friends in an industry which has been taken aback by the sudden moves in

the US against offshore outsourcing. While there is no doubt that bureaucrats in

the UK would be watching US moves with close attention, it was heartening to the

industry that one of the major customer nations and an important influencer in

the global political and business firmament could so confidently support the

Indian software story. It’s mutual of course. The recent major outsourcing of

IT contracts of the National Health Services to consortia that included Indian

offshore companies have been matched by the awarding of a contract from our very

own ministry of IT to foreign firms in fair competition.

Country

delegation after delegation pitched the glories of Wales, Taiwan,

Hong Kong, Canada, etc to woo Indian firms to set up centres and

offices

in their countries
Ganesh

Natarajan

The backlash refrain echoed through the halls of the conference during the

business sessions, right till the very last speaker, Lante of the ITAA, who

cautioned the Indian industry against playing too vocal a role in the ongoing

debates in the US. He also advocated a "let the US companies fight your

battle" approach. As Washington think tank leader Simmons said, the Indian

Software industry is in a lonely position and India has been protectionist in

too many sectors for too long to justify excessive noise in favour of free

trade. A matter of some concern, however, that most of the well-informed global

speakers felt that the problem would not just go away after the US elections,

but would linger long enough to warrant serious attention and engagement in a

proactive and careful manner.

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This Nasscom event will also be remembered for some excellent innovations in

session planning. India’s famous WITS (Wipro, TCS, Infosys and Satyam) fielded

their best (Ramadorai, Raju, Nandan and Vivek Paul by videoconference) to

discuss the challenges of the past present and future. Industry icon Narayana

Murthy offered pithy advice to politicians, economists, industry leaders and the

media on the virtues of humility and customer focus and while researchers from

Gartner and Forrester outlined the strategies needed to win business in the new

emerging global IT landscape, a clutch of IT



Secretaries argued about the hottest destination for BPO.

And the surest sign of an industry that has truly come of age–in a little

room buried in the basement of the Oberoi hotel, country delegation after

delegation pitched the glories of Wales, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, etc to woo

Indian firms to set up centres and offices in their countries.

And in the true tradition set by the irrepressible Dewang Mehta, the Nasscom

fashion shows too, like the conference, moved from strength to strength.

Directed for the second year running by actor- turned-politician-turned-event

director Nitesh Bharadwaj, this year’s edition featured Software CEOs dressed

in costumes ranging from Gandhi to Einstein to Shiva to Vivekananda to Shivaji

(did somebody say–in search of alternate careers?) and jostling for attention

amidst their cat walking peers and music and dance –an eye-opener for many of

our foreign guests who realized that this 24 by 7 industry plays as hard as it

works. As many visiting CEOs and CIOs concurred, this is a truly amazing

industry that reflects in every way possible, the vibrancy of India Shining and

will treat every success as a milestone on the path to true global achievement.

The author is deputy chairman & managing director of Zensar Technologies

and chairman of Nasscom’s SME Forum for Western India Ganesh

Natarajan

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