Indo-EU IT biz is all about relationships

MUMBAI: Indian companies need to invest a lot more in building relationships and localization efforts, with European Union countries, panelists at the Nasscom-IBW CEO panel on Fuelling Indo-EU trade and investments: Build or Buy challenge unanimously opined.

Stephen Goetz, managing director, GoetzPartners, Germany, was confident that Indian companies could crack the continental Europe market provided they take the effort in knowing the culture and build relationships.

“The US is not known to be culturally sensitive in Europe. But companies like Accenture have managed to crack the market though it took them some time. They did it through acquisitions and also by appointing key hires from the nationalities there. I’m sure India can do the same.”

In his take on acquisitions, Sudip Nandy, chief strategy officer, Wipro Technologies, which acquired four European companies in France, Germany, Austria and Portugal in the last 18 months said: “Acquisitions are not a choice anymore for Indian providers. It is not build or buy but rather build and buy.”

Nandy stressed that unlike the US market, more front-end investments needed to be made in Europe.

Bernard Bourigeaud, chairman of the management board and CEO of French services company, Atos Origin, said that Indian companies needed to convince European enterprises that work on mission critical systems could be done out of India. He said that Indian companies could tap areas like payments and financial processing and also R&D in health care.

To make better headway in the market, Phil Morris, CEO and founder member, Morgan Chambers, said that there is an image perception about Indian players being just about labor arbitrage of commoditized low-level services than innovation.

Morris added that there was no one key or formula to tap the European continent. “One needs awareness, attitude, openness and deference since culture differs by corporates and countries.”

Subhash Menon, CEO of telecom software major Subex Azure said there was more acceptance from the European markets ever since his company starting making acquisitions.

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