‘IT industry not riding on pricing advantage alone'

The Indian IT industry has retained its edge not because of competitive pricing alone but due to a host of other factors such as investing in people, infrastructure, innovation etc, Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice- Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), has said.

He said while Coimbatore is not a one industry city as it has flourishing manufacturing and textile industries, what the city lacked was “leadership” and the textile industry here should “bite the bullet better now than later” and follow global standards on a host of issues like labour laws, pollution control etc to make it sustainable.

Speaking at the inaugural session of ‘Connect Coimbatore 2011', jointly organised by Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Coimbatore Zone and STPI here, he said the Indian IT industry has sustained an annual 7-10 per cent wage hike and every year its global customers raised questions over its competitiveness.

But the Indian IT industry has continued to be competitive. Mr Lakshmi Narayanan said the Indian IT industry was “riding” not on the pricing factor alone but on a host of other issues – in terms of investing in people, infrastructure, research, innovation etc – and these “offered long-term sustainable advantages”.

He said the IT companies were now talking about going green and being carbon neutral. While it was expensive, with its benefits being felt only after 3-5 years, its advantages would be felt in the longer term when all clients become green. When the IT industries' clients demand that the service providers also become green, only those industries that had invested well ahead of time “will remain competitive”.

Referring to Coimbatore as an emerging IT hub, he said not only people in the city should believe that it is a tier I city, but the people and the city “will have to behave like leaders”.

Mr Lakshmi Narayanan said if the vision or goal was limited in time, then people tend to take “all kinds of short-cuts” that may be beneficial in the short run. But for building institutions in the long term, companies should adopt “global practices right from the beginning”. Coimbatore companies would have to “invest in technology” to remain globally competitive and sustainable. Mr P.W.C. Davidar, Principal Secretary-IT, Tamil Nadu, said while the IT industries in Madurai and Tiruchi regions had generated software exports worth about Rs 25 crore each, Coimbatore region's software exports were above Rs 700 crore last year and the city needs to “build on this eco-system”.

Ms Nandini Rangaswamy, Chairperson-CII Tamil Nadu, said the thrust for the IT sector given by the Tamil Nadu Government has led to the spread of the industry to not only to tier II and III towns but to the rural areas as well, generating job opportunities there.

Mr Ashok Bakthavathsalam, Chairman-Coimbatore Connect, termed the growth of the IT industry in Coimbatore as “spectacular”, especially in the last two years, with the entry of IT majors such as CTS, Dell Computers and Bosch Engineering and after Chennai, the city has emerged as the next IT destination in Tamil Nadu.

Mr J. Balamurugan, Chairman, CII Coimbatore Zone, and Mr R. Venugopal, GM and Centre Head, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions, Coimbatore, also spoke.

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