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(From left) Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Minister for Communication and Information Technology; Mr Jerry Rao, Chairman, Nasscom; and Mr S. Ramadorai, CEO, TCS, at the India Leadership Forum in Mumbai on Tuesday. - Paul Noronha

Mumbai , Feb. 8

SMALL companies, collectively, should start making their presence felt in the IT growth story.

Making this point, Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies, said: "A significant chunk of India's IT revenues comes from the top five."

Of the about $4 billion that the Indian IT software industry would add in revenues this year, about $ 2.4 billion would come from the top five. "This is unhealthy."

According to him, smaller companies needed to start making their presence felt on this front, as, "smaller companies are adaptable and have the capability to address niche issues."

Mr Murthy was delivering the keynote address at this year's edition of Nasscom's annual event.

He pointed that Indian players were predominantly cost arbitragers. "This has to change if we have to have sustainable competitiveness." Mr Murthy said that onsite revenue productivity for Indian companies would have to reach levels that global majors such as Accenture and IBM enjoyed. "It has to go up from the current levels of $80,000 a year to $2,50,000 a year per person. That is a tall order." Unless those levels were reached, it would be difficult for Indian players to call themselves global players, he said.

Mr Murthy made an interesting point about brand building. "The brand strength of Indian companies is low while the brand character is high."

What this means is: Not too many people have experienced the Indian IT brand abroad; but once they experience it, they exhibit a high level of loyalty and recall. According to him, "Few companies spend greater than 0.1 per cent of their revenues in building a global brand."

He also urged smaller players to expand the global delivery model from mere application development and maintenance to areas such as consulting, remote infrastructure management and the like. He also lamented the low investment in research and development of technology, by the average Indian company.

Answering a question from the audience on the measurable success parameters of a company, Mr Murthy said, "I would measure the success of a company based on the dollars per person in the bottom line."

He also warned that the call centre business would become obsolete once voice recognition technologies are perfected.

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