Mera wallah white

Chitra Phadnis

HELEN of Troy might have had a face that could launch a thousand ships. IT companies, however, need not only beauty but also that elusive local touch to launch a marketing offensive. And they need to do it quickly in today's context of the global slowdown and the IT meltdown.

There's been a perceptible shift in strategy, say industry watchers, towards tapping the local advantage. In essence, companies are beginning to believe that it's perhaps not a bad idea to hire an American to sell one's wares in the US market, hire a Japanese to convince his countrymen to go in for Indian products, hire Germans in Germany...

A front end that understands the customer and the market can help reach out to customers better, says Avinash Vashistha, Managing Director, neoIT, a software services exchange which brings service providers and customers together.

With the slowdown making business and customer focus the first priority, most medium and large-sized companies are following this strategy.

It is important to ''communicate with the world that we are global,'' says Manoj Kunja, Vice-President, Strategic Resourcing, Wipro. The company's vision of being one of the top ten service companies in the world drove the need for an international team. The vision required Wipro to be ''more local in each of the geographies,'' says Kunja. Wipro consciously adopted this model from April this year.

The earlier system of sending Indian professionals from here to the US is slowly taking a backseat. While India is still a very strong development centre and the delivery people are almost always Indians, companies are looking at foreigners and NRIs to do their sales and marketing.

Explaining the preference, Kunja says, ''Retailing in India is different from the US in terms of culture, even logistics and regulatory issues.'' It is not as if Indians are less skilled or less capable; It's just that people take more time to adjust to a new culture and a new business environment.

Vasishtha of neoIT believes that while Indians who work offshore are good delivery people and those who work onsite are better at customer interaction, there are few Indians who can see things from a foreign customer's perspective.

The other reason for the growing number of foreigners on the rolls of Indian companies is the shift in the kind of work Indian companies do. Mascot, for instance, is now doing work that involves getting specifications, and there is a need for greater customer interaction, which locals can do best, according to Shyamal Dasgupta, General Manager, HR, Mascot Systems. In Japan, for instance, 50 per cent of the employees are Japanese and the company's new recruitments are fully local.

The shift is definitely not based on laws requiring a certain number of local employees, clarifies Dasgupta. In some places such as the Netherlands, visa regulations make it difficult for Indians and the staff consists of 15 per cent Dutch, 45 per cent Central Europeans, 25 per cent South Africans and 15 per cent Indians.

Satyam Computers claims to have done it right from day one. ''We have had a mix of locals and Indians for the last eight to ten years,'' says S.L.V. Narayanan, spokesperson for the company. ''We think global and act local'', he says. The company has recruited foreigners and NRIs who are accepted in the industry as locals for its support, sales and marketing activities.

Wipro's Vice-Chairman, Vivek Paul, too, is based in the US as is Mascot's Chief Executive Officer, Gerhardt Watzinger. While neither of the companies wanted to comment on the pros and cons of having a chief working out of the US, it is believed that this gives a better acceptance among customers. As Dasgupta of Mascot says, ''There is a greater level of comfort that German customers feel working with a German American.'' Watzinger and Shekhar Sivasubramanian, Chief Executive Officer, work together as the head of the Mascot team, Dasgupta says.

Sonata Software has taken a unique road to localisation. The Managing Director, B. Ramswamy, says that the strategic investment of 26 per cent made in the US-based Spinaway has also given the company an edge in the market. Spinaway employees form the local sales and marketing team, bringing with it domain expertise. The employees also enjoy the benefits of stock options and incentives.

How good does it feel?

So far, there has been no evaluation on how the strategy has worked out. Recruitments are being made at various levels from business development manager, sales manager and regional general manager for specific geographies, to Senior Vice-President.

Was the salary a constraint or are there prejudices against working for Indian companies? Not any more, says Narayanan, spokesperson for Satyam. Before Y2K happened and vaulted India into the status of an IT major, there might have been reservations, but these have disappeared, he says.

Companies too are recognising the importance of offering salaries on a par with the market. The earlier model of ''India- plus'' salaries for employees abroad is slowly giving way to market-determined salaries.

''We are benchmarking with the best of class companies and the role itself to decide salaries,'' Kunja says, though there are variations driven by financial constraints. Most companies offer salaries on a par with the market rates. Satyam admits that it has a differential salary structure for those recruited in the US and those sent from India, ''but it is very small,'' acx cording to Narayanan.

Mastech (Mascot in India), a staff augmentation company refocussed as an offshore development company, is also looking at a healthy mix of Indians and foreigners, but right now the concentration is on getting people back to India.

''Unlike most services companies which spawned out of India, we were incorporated in the US and came to India later,'' says Dasgupta.

The company already has a sales force which is international, and is now concentrating on building up its offshore presence in India.

''We have gone through the pitfalls of local recruitment. Things get controlled at the account level and those people can be responsible for generating or not generating work offshore,'' he says.

He hinted at others in the industry who burned their fingers recruiting locals and later having to send them home. However, that was a few years ago.

All said and done, it may not be amiss to borrow a tip from the races to place a winning bet - and choose horses for courses.

(chitphad@thehindu.co.in)