The Hindu Business Line : Mood upbeat as Nasscom 2004 draws to a close

CALL it the crown jewel of the India Shining story and it is shining brighter than before. The mood among the software and BPO community, assembled for the three-day India Leadership Summit organised by Nasscom, is distinctly upbeat.

The resilience of the software industry, especially the top-tier companies in weathering the two-and-a-half-year-long slowdown and emerging stronger has bolstered the confidence levels of the industry.

Practically all the attention on the opening day of the conference was trained on the four members of the Billion-Dollar Club - TCS, Infosys, Wipro Technologies and Satyam Computers.

And appropriately enough, in a panel discussion on `What it takes to be a billion dollar company', the CEOs of these four companies committed themselves to setting their sights higher.

Mr Ramadorai, CEO, TCS, outlined the importance of developing innovative partnerships with overseas and Indian companies for growth, while Mr Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys, highlighted the need for managing global risk.

Mr Vivek Paul, Vice-Chairman, Wipro Technologies, emphasised the challenge of managing human resources and Mr B. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman, Satyam Computers, talked about the value of building leadership attributes across the organisation.

The leap to maturity for these companies, with the exception of the past two years, has been relatively smooth.

Leapfrogging, however, from a billion-dollar to a multi-billion company may turn out to be a turbulent ride for the top companies.

According to Mr Jayant Sinha, Principal, McKinsey, only one or two in the existing club may emerge as a 5- or 10-billion company at the next stage of this growth phase.

In his view, only companies which can offer business solutions with deep understanding of specific verticals such as manufacturing, healthcare or insurance and operate in a truly multi-cultural environment will be the winners over the next 3-5 years.

The pressure on Indian software companies is also set to emerge from global multinationals such as IBM Global, Accenture or Cap Gemini scaling up their India-based operations.

Ms Rita Terdiman, Research Director, Gartner, said that the next big war of attrition will be between multinationals setting up their back-ends in India, while the Indian top-tier companies establish their front-end all over the globe.

And it is expected that the risks and challenges will be equally high for both the parties. If one of the large multinationals acquires a medium-term Indian software company, said Mr Sinha, it may change the competitive equation altogether.