U-turn to America

A month in the United States, partly on holiday and partly on work, provided

some unique insights into the evolution of the American psyche and some

interesting pointers–for companies and individuals seeking to be a part of the

American dream.

The good news first–there’s no doubt that there’s only one dominant

political and economic superpower today and that is the United States of

America. After a week in the UK and Germany, where one fast train or car ride

can take you from one corner of the country to the other in a few hours, and a

1-million-euro contracts are seen as big even by the software biggies, the sheer

scale of the US puts the entire software opportunity in a different perspective.

Customers talk about tens of millions when it comes to SW maintenance or BPO

contracts–and if you add systems integration to that, which is the forte of

the Accentures and Cap Geminis, contract sizes approaching half a billion are

still happening. The moral here is that while we may all talk about the need to

have a ‘Rest of World’ strategy, and pat ourselves on the back when a

Japanese or German company finally yields to our marketing overtures, the big

opportunities continue to lie in the US, recession or otherwise!

The flip-side–all the low hanging fruit has been plucked and it now needs

stable corporations with mature management to win significant contracts from

corporate America. New firms with a clutch of people in Bangalore or Mumbai and

an office in San Jose or Edison can no longer win or sustain their businesses in

an environment where nobody takes risks, customer references and due diligence

are the order of the day and a certain threshold size is an imperative for even

gaining the right to enter the software playing field. The good news, however,

is that there’s no longer a need to sell the India story–everybody knows

about it and it is just a question of establishing individual company

credentials and hoping that the Indian and Pakistani border situation does not

reach flashpoint and force more disaster recovery conversations into the

contract negotiation processes.

The interesting point is that this tough business environment has probably

hit local American companies harder than it has hit Indian offshore vendors. The

Big 5 (or 4 or 3) as the case may be, have been hard hit, with rate comparisons

forced by Indian offshore firms, and small SW firms are down for the count.

Another unfortunate dimension to the present American scenario is the damage

done to the American psyche by 9.11.

There’s a certain wariness that pervades the entire country and while the

holiday resorts are still teeming with Americans (and of course a clutch of

people of Indian origin!), there’s an uncertainty about the continuation of

the American lifestyle–visible in the outlook towards capital expenditure and

new projects. The emotional build-up towards the first anniversary of the World

Trade Center events, with every newspaper carrying 9.11 reminiscences, reflects

the tension that still pervades the economy. A quick resolution of the emerging

Iraq crisis and more peace on the Al-Quaeda front should see a progressive

improvement on the business front, which augurs well for Indian software and BPO

fortunes.

And what of individual opportunity? With bodyshopping now a bad word and a

large numbers of wannabe Green Card holders struggling to preserve their H1B

status in the US, the American dream may seem to have gone bust for many young

Indian hopefuls. But the truth is that there are still opportunities for truly

capable and entrepreneurial software professionals in the land of plenty.

Ganesh Natarajan



The author is the global CEO of Zensar Technologies