Som Mittal president National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in a one on one talk with Ashok Kumar of Expressindia.com explains how India has an edge over China in the IT sector.
Ques. Is the idea of ‘advantage India in IT’ still intact?
It is very much there. We have the requisite resources and despite the rise in wages, India is still having advantage of low costs.
Ques. Do you foresee any threat from the Chinese competition?
But, if we don’t get our act together on education (revamping the system to match the talent requirements of the industry) China may become ‘competitive’.
But given our headstart (in the software services sector), India is having leverage (over china). We can infact look forward to tapping the Chinese market in our favour.
Ques. Retaining talent is a big challenge in the IT sector. What according to you could be the long-term solution to it?
On one hand industry is facing talent crunch, while on the other side we have unemployed people without the requisite skills (needed to get work in the IT sector). This gap is a challenge for us and NASSCOM is trying to fill this gap by various initiatives like training people to make them employable for the IT sector.
Ques. You are talking about strengthening the rural India as a complimentary force to Urban India. How will it happen?
We have a NASSCOM Foundation, which is working towards providing low cost Internet connectivity for Information Technology (IT) based empowerment of rural India.
Moreover we have come across many instances where rural areas have given talent people to the industry.
Ques. Senator Barack Obama has reportedly taken a tough stand against outsourcing. To what extent his stand will affect the Indian IT market?
Issues raised in the elections campaigns are emotive. It may affect sentiments but would not have an impact on the ground level. Mr. Obama himself accepted many times that globalisation in the present times is inevitable.
Ques. Runaway inflation is raising the input cost of many companies. To what extent will it have an adverse impact on the job prospects?
It is not having any adverse impact on the job prospects in the industry. It is helping the industry in moderating the skyrocketing wages.
As far as job scenario is concerned, more or less it is very much the same.