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Shifting Sands-New Destinations for IT

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DQI Bureau
New Update

At a recent discussion held in Pune where CEOs and HR heads discussedÂ

the emerging wants and needs of the new generation of software and BPO

professionals, Gautam Chainani, HR Chief of WNS came up with a great point-that

loyalty amongst the new generation of IT job entrants can be ensured by

addressing three levels: the various cultures and backgrounds they represent,

the age profile-which is typically very young, and finally, the city specific

loyalty that it is so important to foster, particularly among the mobile

workforce that is migrating everywhere in search of new excitement. Gautam's

suggestion to our group could well be a prescription for success in many of the

new towns and cities that are vying for attention to capture the attention of

the big real estate buyers of the industry.

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Ganesh

Natarajan
The chief minister, whom the press loves to call Buddha, amazed all the CEOs when he said that the two software parks in the Salt Lake area were already full

Speaking of real estate, the state that has made the most rapid progress is

unarguably West Bengal. Returning to the City of Joy (read Kolkata) after a few

years, I was amazed to find that I could not even recognize the new road that

has been built from the airport and the glamorous new hotel, Sonar Bangla, that

was the venue of the industry-academia interaction could have been transplanted

from anywhere in the world-so sylvan are the surroundings and luxurious the

interiors! And the chief minister, whom the press loves to call Buddha, amazed

all the CEOs when he mentioned that the two software parks in the Salt Lake area

were already full and the government was now developing a new 100-acre complex

to cater to the huge demand from Wipro and HSBC and many of the new prospects

from the IT and call center space.

This boast came alive in front of my eyes when I visited the new areas to see

first-hand the developments in the city. I saw the gleaming towers of IBM,

Cognizant, Wipro and many others. Globsyn, founded many years ago by industry

veteran Bikram Dasgupta, is now struggling to cope with the demands upon its

finishing school by the training needs of corporates. Their new Technocampus,

with its scores of bright-eyed youngsters swarming all over the place, is an

emblem-Kolkata has arrived with a bang and Buddha's vision of capturing 15%

of the IT market share and 20% of the BPO one by the end of the decade may well

happen, given the stability of the Government in the state and the enthusiasm of

its entire political hierarchy as well as its bureaucracy.

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In this particular seminar, the clarity of vision and clear articulation of

not just the CM, but also the minister for higher education, Satya Sadhan

Chakraborty, and IT minister Manabendra Mukherjee, would have put many of their

IT-savvy predecessors, the Naidus and Krishnas, in the shade. For the first

time, this seminar also enagaged many of us from the industry in a debate with

the crème-de-la-crème of academia, from IIT Kharagpur, Jadavpur University,

IIM Calcutta, a session where we discovered that the divisions are still very

strong, and that it will need a very serious effort from all of us to get the

academicians and HR chiefs to sing from the same hymn sheet.

And the tragedy is that the pendulum might swing in the other direction, with

the perceived need to create "industry ready" professionals making

many worthy academic institutions glorified versions of the NIITs and Aptechs.

Not only are we creating a large pool of unemployed and unemployable

graduates, we are doing nothing to serve the growing needs of the industry,

which will soon have no option but to rely on poaching rampantly from each other

to service urgent client needs. Will the powers that be in government, the

vice-chancellors of the hundreds of public and private universities, and

industry HR chiefs get together to find a new way to instead create a large body

of trainable manpower with which to build a base for the future?

The author is deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies

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

Natarajan

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