Bangalore's Big Dreams
India's major outsourcers now offer complex tech services, like design engineering
Similarly, Infosys is looking to move into the turf of management consulting powers such as IBM and Accenture. The idea is to have Infosys management consultants in the United States help a client identify ways to improve efficiency and then hand off to software developers back in India the chore of developing the needed systems. Infosys has raided major consulting companies to hire the executives for its new U.S. consulting arm based in Fremont, Calif., projected to employ 700 people within two years. The challenge "isn't about buying the new technology or the next new thing," says Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, "but how to put it all together to make it better and more effective for business use."
Left brainers. Of course, there are a few bugs. India offers an abundance of technical talent but lacks the middle managers who can be key to bringing in projects on time and on budget. Also, attrition among tech employees, while a manageable 15 percent at the top companies, is thought to be running 20 to 40 percent at some others. And Indian executives acknowledge that their quantitative strengths aren't matched when it comes to creative tasks, such as envisioning the look and feel of a new MP3 audio player.
And it is still India. Transportation is so problematic that Wipro must run a fleet of 150 buses to ferry workers, and the 15-mile drive from the perpetually overbooked hotels downtown to the technology zone known as Electronic City can take more than an hour. Wipro and other firms have offered to pay a third of the projected $80 million cost to build an elevated toll road from the city to their campuses, but political opposition has stalled the proposal. Without improvements in roads, airports, and power generation, India's tech industry "will be unable to continue its meteoric growth," notes a recent Forrester Research study. That worries Wipro Chairman Azim Premji: "I think we lose a lot of foreign credibility because of our infrastructure." So far, though, that hasn't kept the clients away.
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