Indian Tech 3.0

The memory of bad quality lasts longer than the shock of high prices

The transformation of India from global support and talent base to serious
tech market is well under way, even if it's not complete.

Most companies running India-based tech operations are active in the Indian
market-hunting not just for talent, but customers. Seventeen of the DQTop20 have
significant India business (the exceptions being Infosys, Satyam and Cognizant).

Whether they started from the market side (like Accenture) or from the
services and support base (like Capgemini), they're all tapping both HR and
market.

The original offshore pioneer, Texas Instruments, after over two decades of
development-only operation in Bangalore, now considers India a key market for
its chips—thanks partly to all the handset manufacturing activity by Nokia,
Motorola and others, in what is now the world's second-largest mobile market.

For tech giants like HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, India has been a market
first, and a development base later. For all of them, India is a key base-their
development and support operations accounting for between a tenth and a quarter
of their respective global workforces, and over four fifths of their India
presence. Even so, their revenues from India are now significant and noticeable,
globally.

Prasanto K Roy

Take SAP, a new DQTop20 member. It has India-based development, and also
impressive India sales growth in the past couple of years.

And PC giant Dell (world #2), the second DQTop20 entrant. Mainly a tech
support operation in India five years ago, it's moved rapidly from a few global
accounts and software clients to sustained high growth for over three years.
India's laptop PC boom helped.

IDC reported 8.25 million PC sales in India in 2007-08, or 3% of the global
base. Given that India makes up a sixth of the world's population, that's not so
exciting. But laptops made up a quarter of PCs (not far behind the world's 40%
figure), and they could make up a third of PCs sales, this year.

By the way, that annual PC sales figure roughly equals India's monthly mobile
handset sales. India has 290 million handsets today, exactly what was sold
across the world in the first quarter of 2008.

(India accounts for nearly 9% of the world's handset sales, and there's room
for growth here, thanks to the enormous untapped population and the world's
lowest tariffs. Despite the latter, and the abysmally low average revenues per
user, Indian telcos are global giants, growing amazingly and profitably and
leading the world in business models and outsourcing.)

So the PC market is exciting, not for its size today, but what it can grow to
if the right applications drive consumption in sectors such as government,
education, SMB and consumer.



(pkr@cybermedia.co.in)