'Globalisation starts and ends at India'

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: UK’s dominant fixed line telecom operator, BT Group (British Telecom firm) has rejigged its operations dramatically over the past three to four years. And the global services division is clearly emerging as the bright spark in this transformation journey. BT Group CEO, Francois Barrault is now leading the £9.1 billion division to become a fully global software driven services organisation, meeting the needs of global customers around the world. Earlier, he led BT International for three years and built up BT’s activities in 170 countries outside the UK. India seems to hold the key to BT’s growth and the company is targeting revenue of $250 million here by 2009. A French national, Barrault seems enthused about India’s contribution to their growth and is clear that BT has an ‘India Inside’. He narrates his success story and India’s role in a chat with Pragati Verma. Excerpts:

BT contributes about 2% to India’s $50-billion software exports. Will India continue to be big on your offshoring plans?

India has created a lot of brainware. When you visit China, everyone talks of India’s growth story and wants to create a new Bangalore. You have local companies as well as multinationals trying to use the Indian brainware. India, of course, is the central point of the entire globalisation efforts. Globalisation today starts and ends at India.

We have been working successfully in India for many years with partners, who handle some of our non-core but mission critical activities. We are expanding in India and have just opened a global operations centre in India. The new centre in Gurgaon will employ up to 300 people to run systems and processes for BT’s various lines of business worldwide. The centre will also support business functions such as procurement, legal, finance, and human resources.

Tomorrow, others can replicate India’s success story but it will take time. It takes nine months to deliver a baby; you can’t do it in a month.

And what about the Indian market? Is the focus on India increasing as developed markets like the US seem to be moving into a recession?

We started with some five people in a room and today we have more than 3,200 employees and 16 ports. In fact, we keep saying that just as your PCs have an ‘Intel Inside’ logo, BT should have ‘India Inside.’