Good bye recession, bright days are ahead!

BANGALORE, INDIA: If recession and pink slips were the buzzwords of 2009, there is a glimmer of hope as we are set to welcome the new year. Whoever we talked to in the recent times expressed the hope that the worst is over and recovery is round the corner.

As the hope of recovery gets brighter, we must continue to invest in universal education so that we can make sure that access to growth is available to all, said Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys Technologies chief executive officer and managing director.

“Global economy is recovering after a terrible 2009 for the world. India is recovering faster and looking forward to a GDP growth of 8-10,” he observed.

Kris also suggested that we must invest in vocational and higher education so that people are prepared for the jobs of the future. “We must invest in research so that tomorrow's innovations and tomorrow's enterprises are created. We need to address governance so that we get full benefit of the money we spend and programs and projects are implemented and benefits reach everyone,” he added.

It is this potential of education sector that Ninad Karpe, CEO and MD Aptech Ltd would bank upon. “IT education will see a big surge for all courses. However, there will be a greater demand for specialized offerings like cloud computing,” he said.

He also said that in 2010, all Indian IT companies will re-start large hiring, which will augur well for the entire industry.

Microsoft India also expressed confidence about 2010, as the recovery from the economic downturn has already started in India.

“We are witnessing a sustained growth in several sectors of the economy. As far as the IT industry is concerned, the Indian market continues to present a plethora of opportunities and the key to unlocking these opportunities is investment in innovation,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Despite the challenges posed by the year gone by, Wipro said 2009 was also a satisfying year by many counts. “Given the overall economic climate in the background of the global financial crisis, we revisited our business model fundamentals and fine-tuned it to the changing customer needs,” said Suresh Senapaty, chief financial officer of Wipro.

Advantage India

The global economic recovery will be a boost for India, feels Alok Bardiya, vice president - marketing and managed services strategy – Tata Communications. He observed that the center of gravity for growth has clearly started moving to China, India and other emerging markets.

“While companies improved their profitability in 2009 focusing on cost, expect revenue growth to start kicking in as well in 2010. But the focus on cost optimization will continue. This, combined with innovation, will define what the world now calls the 'new normal',” he said.

However, according to Rajesh Janey, president, India and SAARC, NetApp IT spending would increase significantly in 2010 as the economy recovers. “Customer priorities have been fundamentally altered, and they would continue to focus on reducing costs and increasing efficiencies,” he said.

Janey also said government IT spending is expected to be a big driver of growth in 2010. “Government projects led by UID will offer a huge opportunity in data storage and management,” he added.

On the other hand, Deepak Patel, CEO, Aditya Birla Minacs, thinks 2010 would see companies willing to outsource more and more of their ‘core business’. “At Minacs, we plan to increase our high-end business and our capabilities in delivering judgment based work. We also aim at acquiring the right assets that we can leverage to increase our offerings base. This is primarily to add new capabilities and not just buy scale,” he said.

According to Yogesh Bijlani, vice president, SAARC, Telenity, “With the increased competition amongst operators we see existing entertainment VAS services like CRBT, subscription services becoming a commodity and subscribers demanding utility VAS services like Location Based Applications & Social Community Services.”

Safe and secure

Dewang Neralla, director, Atom Technologies said, with the renewed confidence in the economy and rapid positive changes, 2010 should ideally be called the re-launch of safe and secure electronic payments. “With the spending power growing up, we would see customers adopting alternative channels like tele-commerce including mobile as well as IVR for the payments,” he said.

Puneet Datta, Senior Marketing Manager, Canon BIS, said the company is aiming to strengthen the relationship with channel partners.

“In order to take its relationship with the channel partner to the next level and to further strengthen it, Canon BIS has regrouped its existing and the new partner programs under one umbrella titled “ROCKS,”he said. “The program is part of Canon’s national channel strategy to showcase commitment in building competencies with channel partners to enable them climb the value chain.”

Ring in the new

Bikram Dasgupta, chairman, Globsyn Group said 2010 by all indications promises to be a heartening year. Agreeing that 2009 was a challenging year for the industry, he said the coming year would usher in new trends that would lead to improved and much more aggressive growth prospects.”

Deepak Sharma, general manager - South Asia, Eaton Power Quality Pvt. Ltd, said the economy will see a healthy growth in base business as the GDP resumes high growth. He also said solar business would grow significantly this year, as government policies become clearer.

Dr. Vinod Vasudevan, Group CEO, Flytxt, also agreed that the economy is now showing signs of recovery. In 2010, we should see more stability and possibly, an upward trend.

“Telecom and technology would be two sectors to watch out, driven by broad based growth - newer geographies and newer customer segments. In telecom, we are already seeing this with the huge growth in emerging markets and rural subscriber base.”

He said that 2010 will see increased adoption and wide spread use of telecom services and applications that were hitherto seen as high-end and technology services penetration would lead to decreasing the digital divide in India.

Said Sandeep Nair, managing director, Emerson Network Power (India) Pvt. Ltd, the few sectors that performed well in 2009 were IT/ITES, telecom, healthcare and government. “These sectors also fueled the growth of data center and cooling solution market in India. 2009 was one of the best years for the Indian telecom industry,” he added. “This year, India represented the second largest mobile subscriber base in the world with tele-density crossing the 50 per cent mark.

According to Shelly Choudhary, MD, Unisys Infosolutions Pvt Ltd, 2010 is for mobile Ads, local content; 3G based content, utility based applications, LBS, mobile emails.

“Mobile commerce will be the opportunity and VAS is the best choice for operator in an era of decreasing ARPUs and per second fight. Consolidation will happen this year between VAS companies and aggregators,” he said.

So finally the bitter memories are giving way to sweet dreams for the India Inc.