Anshuman Daga

BANGALORE: Indian software firm Trigyn Technologies Ltd. has laid off about 10 per cent of its 700-odd staff to cope with loss of business due to a slowdown in the United States, a company spokesman said. "Given the present troubled economic environment in the US, we have to be realistic about our business growth," he told Reuters from Bombay on Wednesday.

The firm has laid off about 60-70 programmers over the last one month, he said. Trigyn is the first listed Indian software company, which has cut jobs amidst the technology turmoil in the US - which accounts for about 70 per cent of its exports.

The news of the job losses comes less than two weeks after the high-profile chief executive officer of the young and budding software developer quit for personal reasons. Trigyn's move to reduce business from dotcom clients and the US slowdown had led to surplus staff, the spokesman said.

It plans to cut its exposure to dotcom firms to less than one per cent of its revenues in the first quarter of 2001-02 (April-March) from five per cent in the third quarter of the past year, he said. The company has not yet released results for 2000-01.

Trigyn reported revenues of about $30 million in the first nine months of 2000-01. About 20 per cent of its revenues came from dotcom clients in the first quarter of 1999-2000. The job cuts and the resignation of Suresh Rajpal, Trigyn's CEO come as a blow for the firm whose clients include Hewlett-Packard , HSBC and Credit Suisse First Boston.

Rajpal, a former India head of Hewlett-Packard, founded Trigyn more than a year ago by merging a firm he set up with an already listed company. Trigyn's job cuts come at a time when the firm had frozen hiring unless it was linked to specific projects. It has also closed some US offices and slashed top executive’s salaries by 50 per cent.

On Wednesday, Trigyn's shares ended flat at Rs 62.55 on the Bombay Stock Exchange while the main 30-stock index rose 0.55 per cent.

Trigyn's stock has fallen 78 per cent in calendar 2001 while the Bombay infotech index has lost 40 per cent in the same period. Analysts have said smaller Indian software firms are the most vulnerable to the downturn in the US market as they had a small client base and catered to fickle Internet customers.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.