The Hindu Business Line : Make us regional hub, Egypt tells Indian IT firms

A high-powered delegation of IT companies from Egypt is visiting India to woo Indian companies and entrepreneurs to explore mutual cooperation, projecting it as a hub for the region.

Backed by multi-lingual skill capability and strong technology background, Egypt believes that it could be an ideal destination to serve as a hub for Indian IT services and BPO companies. With several regional cooperation for trade, Egypt could serve as a platform, the Egyptian Government delegation conveyed at a meeting hosted by Nasscom here on Thursday.

Promoting IT

The Nordix Chairman, Mr Khalid A. Ismail, said that apart from creating a business-friendly environment, the Egyptian Government has initiated several steps that include slashing of customs and duties to promote IT sector, while providing a secure business environment.

This has meant that it is now a host to some of the largest global corporations such as Microsoft, Alcatel, Siemens, Oracle to name a few.

Participating in a round-table organised by Nasscom along with a delegation of industrialists and officials from the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Dr Ismail said apart from engineering skills, Egypt is base for multi-lingual professionals, which makes it an attractive destination when it comes to technical help desk and call centre services. In addition, when Indian companies plan to tap the Arab world, they can use the regional language skills for localisation.

Various advantages

For instance, Microsoft manages a multi-lingual capability centre in Egypt serving some 11 languages.

While enterprises could utilise low labour disruption and leverage long working hours, they could make use of various agreements Egypt had with Arab world, Europe and the US for promoting their ventures.

Outlining the achievements of the Indian IT sector, the Nasscom engineering services forum co-chair, Mr B. V. R Mohan Reddy, earlier explained how Infotech Enterprises partnered with Boeing and helped them cut costs through engineering services.