Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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Accenture to hire 8,000 in India

Global technology and consultancy giant Accenture on Monday said it is going to add around 8,000 people in India by the end of next year taking its total employee base in the country to 50,000.

"We are 42,000 right now and we imagine we will be about 50,000 by the end of 2010," Accenture Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William D Green said on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit.

Indicating a recovery from the global downturn, Green said the company will continue to focus in India, especially in the areas of analytics.

Accenture's focus in India is going to be the analytics space, which will help the clients convert information into insights for better yields.

Green added, "We believe that analytics is going to be an important trend that our customers are going to demand from us. We think India is going to be a great place for us. We have some core centres of excellence in the analytics space in the country."

Accenture, which has annual revenue of $21.58 billion for fiscal 2009, will strengthen its focus on clients in pharmaceutical, telecommunications and energy in the country.
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Infosys BPO to hire 2000 by FY10

Infosys BPO, the back-office unit of IT firm Infosys Technologies, today said it would hire 1,500-2,000 people by the end of the current fiscal.

"We plan to hire 2000 people in the next four-five months or by the end of this fiscal. Currently, we are 16,000 people in India," Infosys BPO CEO Amitabh Chaudhry told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

The 300-million Infosys subsidiary recently signed an agreement with the Andhra Pradesh government to set up rural BPO centres in 22 districts of the state.

Infosys BPO gets significant part of its business from North America and Europe.

To bag more clients, it is said to be looking at aligning with Finacle, the banking solution business of its parent. Infosys BPO is also reportedly planning to set up a new delivery centre in the United States before the end of this financial year.

The back-office services wing of Infosys has eight delivery centres across the globe, including in Mexico, but it did not have a centre in the US so far.

Infosys BPO registered revenues of $71.3 million with a net profit of $16.3 million for the September quarter.
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Mahindra Satyam sees worst over

Indian IT services firm Mahindra Satyam has added 35 new clients since April 13 and lost just a handful, said the firm's chief executive, adding that the worst was behind it and that spending by key customer groups was improving.

Mahindra Satyam, earlier known as Satyam Computer Services, was acquired by India's Tech Mahindra in April after the firm was hit by India's biggest corporate fraud, which came to light in January.

"I do believe that we are now stable from a customer, or a delivery perspective," C P Gurnani said.

"I am very, very clear that the bottom is behind us and we are back on a path to recovery," he added in the interview on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum event in New Delhi.

He said the company, which lost 25 to 30 percent of its customers between January and Tech Mahindra's agreement to take over the firm on April 13, had since then added 35 new customers and, to his knowledge, lost just three.

"These 35 logo accounts have come from emerging markets, the Middle East and Africa, and we have also added some clients in the US and Europe," Gurnani said.

The firm had about 380 customers when Tech Mahindra won an auction to take it over, said Gurnani, who was president of international operations at Tech Mahindra before taking over at Mahindra Satyam.

Tech Mahindra, a unit of tractor and utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra, owns about 43 percent of Mahindra Satyam.

By comparison, rival Wipro said it added 37 clients in the July-September quarter.

Satyam's founder and then-chairman Ramalinga Raju shocked investors in January by saying profits had been overstated for years, which at the time had put in doubt the survival of a Hyderabad-based company once ranked as India's No. 4 software services exporter.

"I am very happy with the progress that we made, considering that this company had a situation where the focus on new sales had practically become zero," said Gurnani.

He said growth for the IT outsourcing industry would come from clients including the financial services sector.

"They went through a fair amount of slowdown in spending. And now with some of the, at least the American firms you've seen, the kind of numbers they are returning with, I do believe that they will accelerate their spending," he said.

Bigger rivals Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services have said demand from financial services clients was stabilising, but manufacturing and telecoms remained weak spots.

"Similarly healthcare, education, government, public sector -- I mean these are the areas where the spending velocity will be higher than last year," Gurnani said.

"The momentum is good, the uptake has improved, and I hope that it translates to better numbers not only for us but for the Indian IT industry," he said.

Gurnani also said the restatement of company results for recent years would be made on or before June 30, 2010.
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Infosys eyeing acquisitions in Europe, US

The back-office arm of Infosys Technologies, India's No. 2 software services provider, is looking at acquiring firms in Europe and in the United States of $50 million to $100 million, a top official said on Monday.

Infosys BPO would also hire 1,200 people in the current financial year, the unit's chief executive, Amitabh Chaudhry, told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

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Indian engineers becoming backbone of Japan's IT industry

Indian system engineers have emerged as the backbone of Japan's IT industry and more are flocking to the country which is witnessing a steep decline in its work force.

Indian system engineers are making their presence felt in Japan's information technology industry. Around 22,000 Indians are living in Japan at the end of 2008, nearly double the number a decade ago.

"India is already the international standard in the IT world," said Kenichi Yoshida, a director of Softbridge Solutions Japan Co., a staffing company. Its founder is an Indian-American, who set up the Japanese company in 2002.

Indian engineers are sent out to Japan after studying Japanese language for five months. In addition to operation and maintenance of financial information systems, they are in charge of systems development for computers and mobile phones, Kyodo news agency reported.

"While the number of working people is decreasing in Japan, in India the number will continue to increase until 2040. Education levels are also high. It's important for Japanese industry to work together with India," Yoshida said.

His company is also providing opportunities for Japanese engineers to undergo training in India for two to four months, and major Japanese enterprises are taking advantage of the service.

"Everything is in English there. They eat curry from same bowl and return home a lot tougher," he said.

Tokyo's Edogawa Ward has the highest number of Indian residents, at about 2,200. After visa requirements for engineers working in Japan were eased in 2001, Indians flocked to the ward because it is close to the centre of Tokyo and prices are lower than in other wards.

"Until several years ago, there were only men in their 20s whose families were back home, but recently, the number of Indians accompanied by their families is increasing," said Jagmohan Chandrani, 57, a company president who came to Japan about 30 years ago.

Chandrani imports and sells black tea, runs a guest house and also serves as leader of the Indian society in the ward, assisting his countrymen in their day-to-day lives.

Many new residents are from Bangalore, known as India's Silicon Valley. Given that tandoori chicken and nan, which are popular in Japan, are northern Indian dishes, Chandrani has opened a southern Indian restaurant and a food store for engineers yearning for the taste of home.

He also participates in local events and holds an Indian festival twice a year, inviting Japanese from neighboring areas.

Chandrani says he hopes the ward will become not an 'India town' but a place serving as bridge between the two countries.
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India needs 5 Lakh project managers: PMI

According to a research by Project Management Institute (PMI), India will need about five lakh project managers in the future to complete 591 projects being carried out in the country.

About 591 projects each worth more than Rs. 100 crore were being executed in the country and it required a great number of project managers in order to finish them on time, said Raj Kalady, Managing Director (MD), PMI.

"The initial estimates of Rs. 5.25 lakh crore for the total projects have aroused to Rs. 5.85 lakh crore due to lack of proper project management," said Kaladi.

PMI will organize an all India conference starting from November 13, former MD of Maruti Udyog will be the key note speaker in the conference and NASSCOMM President Som Mittal and ISRO Chairman Dr. K Radha Krishnan are among others to attend the conference.

Kalady stated that PMI has developed 12 applications of project management on the lines of world's best practices. The institute was also negotiating with some of educational institutions to offer scholarships to students pursuing project management course.