Wipro, HCL are leading service providers

BANAGLORE, INDIA: Zinnov Management Consulting, a leading Globalization and Market Expansion Advisory  firm, today launched its much awaited Rating of Global R&D Service Providers' across various geographies like India, China, Russia and Eastern Europe, said a press release.

The study titled “Global R&D Service Providers (GSPR) Rating 2012”,  is an annual study undertaken by Zinnov to assist business leaders in spearheading global engineering initiatives and enable them make right decisions in partner selection across geographies.

According to the Study, Wipro and HCL are the leaders in the overall rating. While Wipro has a mature practice, HCL has grown significantly over the last two years. iGate, Infosys, Tech Mahindra & Mahindra Satyam and MindTree are some of the other established players with expansive vertical coverage.

The R&D and PES service provider space is unique — with significant number of companies with niche capabilities. These companies are hyper-specialized either across a vertical or a service line.

Some of the top established and niche players are Infotech Enterprises and L&T IES in Engineering Services, Aricent and Sasken in Telecom, Quest Global in Aerospace, Vanceinfo, EPAM systems, Symphony — Teleca and Persistent in the ISV segment.

The top six players constitute close to 60 per cent of the total R&D service provider market, the study highlights. All 48 participating companies have been assessed on parameters like Human capital, product development capabilities, financials, ecosystem linkages, infrastructure and innovation / IP creation.

While HCL and Wipro are leaders with overall capabilities, companies like Aricent, iGate, Infotech Enterprises,  L&T IES, Symphony Teleca, Persistent, establish themselves as leaders in specific industry verticals.

Commenting on the study, Pari Natarajan, co-founder and CEO, Zinnov, said, ''We see that service providers are building deep capabilities in specific areas like product conceptualization and user experience design, which are some of the critical capabilities needed in driving Industry transforming innovation for their customers.''

The study also brings to light that of all the offshored R&D outsourcing work done in India, about 63 per cent of the work is delivered by the MNC Captive Centers.

Commenting on this specific trend, Sundararaman Viswanathan, manager-consulting, Zinnov, said, ''We are seeing an increased trend of re-organization of services and verticals within the service providers. The service providers are taking a hyper-specialization approach. Segments like Industrial Automation and Healthcare (Medical Devices) are catered to by specialist service providers.''