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Indian telcos are early technology adopters

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DQW Bureau
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Compared to Indian IT companies, which are slow to capitalize on innovative
technology, the country's telecom companies like Reliance, Bharti and Tata are
early adopters of techno-logy, said Promod Ha-que, Managing Partner, Norwest
Venture Part-ners' (NVP). He said that unlike their US counter-parts, Indian
telcos were keen to innovate, since they don't have to deal with legacy
systems and complicated cost structure.

Haque, who is leading a group of NVP's port-folio companies to help them
strike partnerships with Indian clients, said, "The center of gravity of
technology is shifting to India and China. Over the last nine months, we haven't
funded a com-pany that doesn't have a development center in India. This seems
to be the trend going for-ward." The portfolio companies include
specialized firms like Virtela, Airespace, Veraz Networks, Amberpoint, Cast Iron
Systems, Collabnet and SPSS.

Explaining the rationale behind NVP's 'Avenues' program, which is a
platform for sharing new technologies with Indian companies, Haque said, "NVP
is providing its portfolio companies contacts and the networ-king required to
penetrate the Indian market. We have show-cased seven com-panies that are
relevant to the Indian context. The challenge for them now is to prove their
model by translating their services in-to revenues and relationships."

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He added that the delegation's interactions with SIs and telcos in Mumbai
had borne fruit. "They have already signed on RFPs with some companies.
Even the government sector and ministries like the railways have approached us
on Web technologies," he informed.

NVP partner, Vab Goel urged CIOs not to treat technology as an expense, but
to use it to get ahead of competition.

CyberMedia News

Mumbai

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