Rediscovering Indian Glory

If there is one Hollywood movie that should be on the ‘must-see’ list of

all leaders and leader-aspirants of the Indian IT industry, it is Artificial

Intelligence–or AI! Filmed by the cinematic genius Steven Spielberg, the movie

is based on an original concept of Stanley Kubrik. It traces multiple space-time

trajectories as Mecha–the world’s first mechanical being capable of feeling

love–journeys across a 2000-year continuum in search of a Blue Fairy that will

make him capable of being loved by Orga, his organic mother.

Our IT industry draws some parallels with AI. The current struggle of the

software segment in the wake of the US slowdown and the battle of Indian

hardware and networking companies to survive in the face of a poor domestic

economy are some. And that’s just a small phase in the vast space-time

existence.

Beyond this comparison, however, is the fact that the Indian IT Industry

today is in search of a new war-cry and possibly a new destiny. The $87-billion

dream is currently in ‘pause’ mode as companies work extremely hard to stay

put and as performance becomes the watchword instead of retention. It makes good

sense to go back in time to understand the phases of glory and gloom that

various industry sectors have journeyed through.

The Eighties: Capitalizing on opportunity

The Indian IT industry really became relevant in the early eighties when, in

one fell swoop, the government banished IBM, Coke and other multinationals from

the Indian soil. Nature abhors vacuum, and the leadership roles were quickly

assumed by home-grown companies like HCL, Wipro, DCM, Nelco and PSI. And that

was also the time when the grand old man of Indian software, Fakirchand Kohli,

was at his peak, quietly beginning the transformation of TCS from a supplier of

trained Indian engineering talent to the US industry to a harbinger of the

Indian offshore software movement.

The decade clearly belonged to hardware vendors, since software was rarely

seen as something that a customer would pay big money for. The emphasis then lay

on convincing customers to invest in computers, keeping competition at bay by

aggressive price cuts and throwing in all sorts of real and perceived freebies

to provide increased value to the customer. The same business attributes are

called for again in the current scenario, and the ingenuity, opportunism and

ability to cope will be required again in good measure to build a platform for

success in this decade.

The Nineties: Riding the software wave

The nineties were really the halcyon years for Indian software and training.

The decade also saw the US spearheading four technology movements–client-server,

ERP, Y2K and, of course, dot-com. Each opened a floodgate of opportunities for

Indian companies, and there was plenty for all. Best, the Indian software sector

made a deep and impressive registry in the minds of CIOs in the US. And as a

natural corollary, the Indian training industry could hardly catch its breath as

the demand for software professionals created the software dream for every

18-year-old, who made a beeline for the training institutes.

The industry was on

a big roll, and it seemed that nothing would ever stop it.

One casualty of the nineties was, of course, the hardware sector. With the

entry of IBMs, Compaqs and Dells, computer manufacturing in India lost all

relevance buffeted by the twin force of multinational competition and weak

domestic demand. Leadership in this time-space came from making a transition to

software, which majors like Wipro and HCL did admirably well.

Companies that succeeded in this decade–Infosys and Wipro in software;

Aptech and NIIT in training; and smaller entities like Aditi and Ramco in

products and solutions–displayed the ability to lead through innovation and

growth. And the presence of charismatic leadership made every vision an

achievable goal for these organizations.

New Millennium: New opportunities

Suddenly, almost without warning, the slowdown appeared–the boom created by

dot-coms was too good to last. After the ‘irrational euphoria’ of 1999

abated in the middle of 2000, and US investors lost over $5 trillion in value

(that’s a larger number than the economies of UK and some other European

nations combined), the IT services sector caught a cold too. Customer spending

in the US, Japan and now in Europe started dwindling with the inevitable impact

on the growth trajectories of the Indian software industry.

Leadership today demands three basic elements: flexibility, speed and

performance management. Flexibility is the need of the hour as traditional

opportunities like e-commerce and telecom that seemed so compelling and

sustainable at the end of the nineties, are suddenly caving in. New tricks have

to be learned to cater to customer demands as diverse as EAI and wireless. Speed

of response is the only differentiator in a market where Indian companies are

now competing with each other and with nimble new competitors from Canada,

Ireland and even Russia, Philippines and China for market share in the US and

Europe. And performance is the new watchword, as the bar keeps getting higher

for individuals and teams to compete for global businesses.

In these times, the Top 10 organizations among the DQ Top 20 will most

probably maintain their positions in the next few years, by leveraging their

size and capability. However, it will be interesting to see which companies

occupy the other ten slots three years from now. Words of Tom Peters come to

mind: "Crazy times call for crazy organizations." Indeed, only large

doses of creative madness will see Indian IT companies succeed and thrive in

this decade and later..

And finally back to the Spielberg-Kubrik fantasy. In the opening sequence of

AI, when the challenge of building a Mecha capable of loving humans is presented

to a team of researchers, a member raises a valid point: Even if science could

enable the creation of a loving robot, capable of feeling and demonstrating

affection for organic human beings, would humans find the ability to reciprocate

the love for a creature that was not human? While the movie itself leaves this

question unanswered, this does raise a question for all the companies that have

been featured in the three issues of the Top 20. Will history remember their

contribution towards making an industry come out of the shadows and build one of

the country’s greatest dreams of global dominance? Read this column in the

Year 2020 for the answer!

Ganesh Natarajan is

deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies and the global CEO

of Zensar