West Bengal set to become an IT hub

KOLKATA, INDIA: Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) recently held a two-day conference on the prospects and the growth scenario of IT, communication and telecom in Kolkata.

Major IT enablers and investment drivers in the state attended the event. The conference focused on the investment and technological possibilities in Kolkata.

Appreciating the efforts made by the state government to woo IT investors in the recent years, Dr Debesh Das, IT Minister, Govt of West Bengal said, “Last fiscal, we had a steady growth of 45.6 percent in the IT sector in Bengal with IT exports topping the charts. We are now targeting to double IT exports in software. With IBM and Wipro as the major growth enablers in Bengal, we have revised our IT policy to make it more investment friendly.”

Speaking on the global scenario of IT and the role India can play in the global forum, Kaushik Chatterjee, CFO, Tata Steel elucidated, “The major economies in Europe are heading towards stagnation particularly in the field of IT and manufacturing. As production costs are gradually becoming higher in Europe, there is an urgent need for them to look into other nations for production at cheaper rates.”

Touching key issues in investment and expansion process in the region, Amitabh Ray, Director, IBM India, stated, “Eastern India is less crowded in terms of investment and capital growth. However, there is a pool of skilled manpower and a developed distribution system, where IT companies can look for greater potentials.”

He further added that as the attrition rate is becoming higher in India particularly in the southern and eastern quarters, companies across the nation are developing aggressive technical training programs for IT freshers which are pulling up the company costs. “Moreover, NRI investments in small and medium range are generating employment on a very small scale but the prospects seem to be dim compared to the MNCs in terms of operations, marketing policies and the infrastructure it has,” he said.

Citing the importance of IT companies, Arup Dasgupta, MD, Metalogic Systems emphasized that academia cannot produce skilled and industry ready professionals and the onus lies with the IT companies to make them more productive. “IT major companies share the bulk of software exports, Rs 1.5 lakh is being spent on each employee every year for training and refresher courses,” he added.

As a solution, CII (East) has recently signed an MoU with Bengal Engineering and Science University and West Bengal University of Technology for recruitment and employability issues.

“IT companies need to be more focused and develop their operations in terms of the dynamics in the market. A change in the operatives has been noticed recently with major MNCs now focusing on the less developed eastern segment drawing in more investment and is turning out to be more skilled-manpower intensive than capital intensive. This may prove to be a major turning point in the structure of the IT industry,” Roy added.

HCL Infosystems and Capgemini Consulting India are all set to make their presence felt in the eastern region. In this effort, Capgemini has plans to increase their headcount by 2,000 in Bengal by the end of Q3 FY 08-09. Capgemini has already taken up 2,00,000sq ft at Unitech’s IT SEZ in the upcoming Rajarhat project and may acquire BPOs in India and abroad.

Sharing his plans about India operation, Baru S Rao, CEO, Capgemini Consulting India said, “We will be shifting to the new Unitech SEZ facility by the next week-end where 1,700 employees may be accommodated. Also, by 2010, we aim to have 40,000 employees in India raising Indian personnel to 40 percent of Capgemini’s global operations. Currently, 26 percent of our total global workforce operates from India.”

On the other hand, HCL Infosystems may recruit another 1,200 employees including freshers in the next fiscal. It is targeting Bengal as its major consulting hub and system integration.

Discussing the possibilities in IT in Bengal, Kiran Karnik, former President, Nasscom concluded that Bengal should concentrate on engineering and security services in the domain of IT, while multimedia and gaming options can be explored at a later stage.