Why doesn't India plug in?

Sqn Ldr B.G. Prakash

FACTS are stranger than fiction. In the last five years, Israel has been emerging a newfound partner of the Indian Armed Forces. With participation in the last two Aero India expositions, some negotiations took place, some deals were concluded. The intelligence wing of the Indian Government finds a similarity - both India and Israel face threats of militancy and terrorism from across the border. And MOSSAD of Israel is a model for other countries in anti-subversion and intelligence gathering. Israel's military electronic industry is well-entrenched, many of the components and hardware being indigenous. Yet, Israel's Information Technology is little explored from India's point of view and it is yet to partake with full potential in the premier show, Bangalore IT.com.

Israel seems to have specialised in IT start-ups that get ''built up'' to be acquired by global giants. In three years, the acquisitions total $13 billion. In turn, Amdocs, an Israeli company, acquired the US-based ITDS for $182 million. Business tycoons may agree that this is not a bad scorecard.

Some highlights:

*Lucent bought Chromatis for $4.8 billion

*Marvel bought Galileo for $2.8 billion

*Intel bought DSP communications for $1.6 billion

*Broadcom bought Vision Tech for $1 billion

*BMC software bought New Dimension software for $675 million

*Platinum bought Memco for $500 million

*VerticalNet bought Tradeum for $480 million

*AOL acquired ICQ Mirabilis for $407 million

*J&J bought Biosense for $400 million

*Texas Instruments bought Libit for $357 million

Driven by technology

Nasdaq and the international stock market are not strangers to Israeli IT companies. The shares of 140 Israeli companies are traded on the US stock exchange. This is rated as the highest from any non-North American country. In the year 2K, 22 Israel companies offered IPOs in the US to raise $1.1 billion. Bourses across Europe see shares of 30 Israeli companies being traded. The nation has created a bargain for itself in the IT industry by focussing on technology and product development. When the software gets into hardware, it is ''embedded'' - the future into which IT is evolving and on to the Internet. Intel, Motorola and Tower semiconductors are large semiconductor manufacturers with units in Israel. Israel is not only entrenched in the semi-conductor industry but also designs and makes machinery that is used in semiconductor manufacture.

Israel exported software worth $3 billion last year ($1 billion in 1997). The country thrives on exports, the electronics industry constituting 40 per cent of all industrial exports. Export worth $17 billion was recorded by the electronics industry in the year 2K. Four large and 30 smaller Internet Service Providers in Israel offer 30,000 local domain names. One-fourth of the population of the country appear to use the Net with an equal number only on telephones. Three-fourths of the population uses cellular telephones while half the population has a PC. In comparison, Bangalore has about the same population as the nation of Israel.

The German, Italian connection

Gerhard Schroeder, the German Chancellor, with a strong delegation of heads of industry, visited the Silicon city of India in October - a coincidence in the build-up to the first edition of Bangalore IT.com in the new millennium. SAP and Siemens have strong presence in IT here. In its 45th year of inception, the Indo German Chamber of Commerce in the city celebrated its silver jubilee as well. A year ago, Germany introduced a few ''card'' schemes to attract Indian IT specialists to take up jobs in Germany. An expected inflow of professionals did not take place; a fact-finding effort to study the reason followed.

Italy does not like to be left behind. Some months ago, on his first visit to Bangalore, the Ambassador of Italy to India, Dr Benedetto Amari, was determined to elevate Italy's position from the 14th trade partner to India to within the first 10.

The 900-member strong Indo-Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industries says software specialists from India can help to translate Italian multimedia software into English, aimed at the US market. More Indian industries in the IT sector can partake in the SMAU, the second-largest international exhibition in IT products in Europe, which is held in Milan every year. It took place during October 17-20. The new president of Nasscom led a delegation to Milan on the way to the London IT meet later in the month, before the Bangalore IT show.

Dr Amari's visit was a forerunner to the visit of the Prime Minister of India to Italy. An agreement on cooperation in tourism between the two countries was the focal point of the visit, hopefully making new ground in IT in the future.

UAS is useful paradigm

Ireland is a known exporter of IT software and 800 Indians are among the 30,000 foreign students in Ireland where students can work for 20 hours a week. Ireland wants more Indian students to enter IT.

Meanwhile, the German Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) are striving for accreditation for the universities, institutions and the courses offered, so as to be on a par with American and British higher education systems. Since 1997, the UAS (177 in number) have been imparting education in English. The aim is to woo English-knowing foreign students, particularly Indians. The universities do not need finance through foreign students; no tuition fee at any level of education in Germany is charged, which is news to many.

Go to market, right now

Data security, Internet service infrastructure, Voice over Internet Protocol, data retrieval and data compression, video conferencing and compression are Israel's software strengths. Distance learning is another sector, which India has ignored - India experimented with this through satellite 25 years ago.

The UAS in Germany are different from the 350 classical universities in that the emphasis is on applied higher education that takes the graduate straight into the industries. Industry experience is part of the curriculum in this scheme of vocational higher qualification and 70 per cent of engineers and 50 per cent of managers in the German industries are from the UAS. The faculty at UAS includes professionals with five years of working experience in the industry. The syllabi get revised with suggestions from the Industry advisory committee and a close interaction is maintained. Indian universities and industries can take a cue from this concept, seriously. One can specialise in environmental engineering too, which is yet to be brought into the curriculum in many Indian universities. It's the collective will that counts, be it IT or environment. Italy is a good example in this context. With all-round effort, the sensibility of the society has been reshaped to clean the nation's highly-polluted seas. There's a lesson in this for India too if it is keen on boosting IT.

Today's world may be complex. Yet in a context of churn and growth, IT offers tremendous opportunities. Indian marketing efforts from the IT sector into the European Union and the world at large have scope to expand with confidence. The British, the Irish and the French are already aware of India's capabilities. What we need to do is grab the opportunity when it appears on the horizon.

The author is a freelance writer based at Bangalore and can be reached at sqnldrbgp@vsnl.com

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