IT Outsourcing India

MUMBAI: Jaipur is fast becoming synonymous to outsourcing hub Gurgaon, with large IT and BPO firms setting up offices in the pink city. More than 100 IT and ITES companies have set up operations in Jaipur in the past three years, growing the total exports from the city by 40%, to about $100 million in the current fiscal year, according to senior state officials.

Although this is less than 1% of India’s total IT exports, the state government has been focusing on this sector mainly due to its potential. “The government’s attitude is very positive as it realises that this sector will contribute largely to the job market,” said Software Technology Parks of India Rajasthan additional director and central head, Sanjay Tyagi. Most of the IT companies are located in these parks and have seen an addition of 10,000 direct jobs.

Software Technology Parks are government-promoted dedicated regions that give tax holidays to IT companies and have been very popular with smaller firms. Jaipur, which was famous as a tourist hub till 2006, has seen growth as a tier II city mainly due to its proximity to Delhi. It’s only a three-hour drive from the National Capital Region and has a large trained and educated workforce. The city has a large number of educational institutes including 64 engineering colleges, with 3,25,000 graduates passing out every year.

Since 2006, when Infosys and Genpact built their BPO operations, a large number of companies have set up shop in Jaipur. Other players such as Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Deutsche Bank, Nucleus Software, Nagarro Software, Truworth, Connexxions are planning to set up shop in the 750-acre SEZ that Mumbai-based Mahindra & Mahindra has built in the city.

“The city not only has great connectivity, but also a large talent pool as many IITians are from Kota,” said Mahindra and Mahindra executive director Arun Nanda, who has set up the group’s SEZs in Jaipur and Chennai.

Around 36% of India’s total commerce professionals such as CAs, cost and work accountants are from Rajasthan. Deutsche Bank set up its captive operations handling the bank’s transaction processes in the Mahindra World City SEZ in July 2008 and will soon be followed by banks like ICICI and SBI.

Infosys BPO has a 42-acre campus in the SEZ which is the BPO’s first campus in India and will have an operational capacity of 15,000 people by 2012. The company plans to hire local commerce graduates for its future operations.

Genpact which services clients like General Electric, National Australia Bank from Jaipur currently has over 3,500 employees at its two centres. The company is investing more than Rs 150 crore for its own SEZ that will be operational by 2010.

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

New Delhi, June 9 (IANS) The IT industry worldwide grew by an estimated 8.2 percent in 2008 because of a good six to eight months of ‘business as usual’ despite the meltdown, though Indian exporters took a beating, leading IT market researcher and consultancy Gartner said Tuesday.

The industry recorded a revenue of $806 billion in 2008 against a turnover of $745 billion in 2007.

‘Vendors had six to eight months of ‘business as usual’ in 2008 and then approximately four months encountering the beginning of the global economic downturn, featuring widespread cost restrictions and cost reductions,’ Kathryn Hale, research vice president for Gartner’s worldwide IT services group said.

India’s growth trajectory during the period took a major beating with exporters managing only 12.9 percent growth last year, less than a third of the healthy 39.8 percent recorded in 2 007.

‘India-based vendors were impacted early in the economic downturn. This would be expected, as these providers sell especially heavily to the financial sector and typically lead with offshore application development services, which are relatively easy to delay in tough times,’ Gartner said.

It was widely anticipated that with the crash of the banking sector in the US, IT revenues worldwide would take a beating with the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) segment constituting a major chunk of the IT sector’s clientele.

‘The only two segments of the market that grew less than forecast were IT management and process management,’ Hale said, adding: ‘This is particularly surprising’.

‘However, apparently, buyer hesitation to commit to the long-term requirements of outsourcing agreements took precedence in 2008,’ Hale said.

Source :  http://sify.com/