India's IT industry are hiring in America ( 2003-11-21 16:14) (Economist.com)
The Indians are coming
Offshore, the process by which a well-paying IT job in, say, Dayton, Ohio,
becomes a much lower-paying IT job in Bangalore, India, has been spreading
terror through America's cubicle farms recently. But even as jobs go to
India—this week, AT&T was the latest big firm to talk of shifting a chunk of
its workforce there—the Indians are hiring in America.
This month, two Indian conglomerates, the Godrej Group and the Essar Group,
each said they were to buy a struggling American call-centre firm. Wipro, an
Indian IT services firm, has announced the purchase of two small American
consultancies. Scandent, another Indian group with interests in the IT industry,
has bought a minority stake in North American Benefits Network, which
administers company health and benefits plans. Other firms flush with cash, such
as Infosys, a big rival to Wipro, are said to be seeking deals.
Officials at Nasscom, the Indian software industry's trade group, say that
their members have made cumulative investments of $350m abroad recently, most of
it in America. Having cut their teeth subcontracting for big western firms such
as IBM and Accenture, the Indians now want to build closer relationships with
customers—big firms that are outsourcing everything from systems maintenance to
accounting. To do that, Indian firms need to offer the ability to run call
centres and the like from America as well as from India.
They are also trying to counter the push of firms such as IBM, EDS and
Accenture into India, and of western IT service firms into the consultancy
business, a move that threatens to strengthen western control of customer
relationships. Wipro, for instance, has bought the energy practice of American
Management Systems, a Boston-based consultancy, and NerveWire, a business and IT
consultancy specialising in the financial services industry.
Pawan Kumar, chair of vMoksha, a young Indian IT firm, thinks that the
Indians face a bigger challenge managing their American acquisitions than
experienced American multinationals face in India.
At the least, these foreign purchases should help tackle a growing image
problem. As Indian firms have sucked jobs out of America, worries have grown in
India about a protectionist backlash in Washington, DC. Work visas are harder to
come by for travelling Indian programmers. Indian firms also worry about
American government use of data-protection and homeland-security laws to thwart
business. Nasscom has retained Hill & Knowlton, a big PR firm, to help
manage politics and the press in America and Britain (where offshoring is also a
hot issue). Their goal, says Harris Miller of the Information Technology
Association of America, an industry lobby group, is to convince Americans that
they are not just Indian companies but “global firms, with a local face
here”.
