The Hindu Business Line : Pune going the Bangalore way, says Premji

"I AM coming back to Pune after 11 months and have always been praising Pune for the infrastructure facilities in the city. I have always found the roads easy to commute and have reached destinations much faster. But now I feel at home as the Pune roads are almost like Bangalore roads."

Mr Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro Ltd, is the latest to join the long list of business leaders who have been mincing no words on status of road infrastructure in the city. "Unless the infrastructure keeps up with the requirements, Pune is going to go the Bangalore way. This is only a forewarning to the corporates in Pune, as otherwise at least 30 per cent of the productive time of the workforce would be lost," he says.

Mr Premji was in the city to give a talk on `Achieving global excellence through IT' organised by the Computer Society of India and Software Exporters Association of Pune.

Mr Premji said the country was getting more globalised and liberalised and "there are at least 30 to 40 Indian business leaders who can successfully spearhead India in this". He said, "India is now becoming mainstream. The amount of interest shown by the Fortune 500 companies in India is also increasing. Earlier it was a question of India or China but India has gained favourable response as the country produces better quality of products, more variety at lesser cost."

But as a warning, Mr Premji said, "Never underestimate the Chinese." The Chinese had been following an assembly line policy for ages and the same methodology would be used by them to get ahead in the software industry also. And this would not take much time. So the Indian software industry must gear up to take on the Chinese challenge at the earliest.

Companies had to constantly innovate and reduce costs. On one hand, they must not only develop expensive new features to please consumers, but also improve environmental and safety standards. They must do all this knowing fully well that could not expect a simultaneous increase in their price realisation. Customers always wanted more for less. The other global trend that virtually spanned all industries was the desire to have fewer vendors.

Clearly, companies that would win would be those that had an excellent record for delivery execution. Delivery execution was the end effect which depended on other components including vendor management and customer relations management. Companies also had to contend with the uncertainties of demand, complexity of the global situations and just-in-time manufacturing systems.

Mr Premji said if the company was mid-sized (with about 3,000 employees), it should be focussed on what it wanted to do and should not become a general purpose vehicle. The company should also be able to differentiate itself in areas and should build itself strongly on these fronts.

As a wrap up, Mr Premji quoted a cartoon where a five-year old son comes to the mother and says, "Mamma there was a call for you half-an-hour ago." The mother keeps questioning the child whether he took down the number, name of the person and so on. For all which the child emphatically says no. "Mamma, you do not know the person, nor the number and I have said you will call back in half-an-hour. You can still do that as the aunty is still holding on." Which means that if the company wants to make headway, "you have to be online always".

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