Bangalore IT.COM scores again

This year's event saw participation from 15 countries including first timers Spain, Australia, Sri Lanka and Fulton County, Georgia as well as Germany, Oman, Russia, Belgium, UK and Malaysia.

The state of Victoria, Australia represented by a 54-member strong contingent comprising 27 companies went back quite impressed with the industry growth in Bangalore. "Our minister Thomson was clearly excited by the business potential between the two countries and we hope to see a lot of partnerships," said CEO of Business Intelligence Technologies, Melbourne Raghu Iyer.

Germany was an active participant this year with three separate delegations representing the country. These included Invest in Bavaria and Go to Bavaria, Frankfurt and the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce. Go to Bavaria GM, Peter Englert said, "Though we are different agencies from Germany, we have healthy competition among us."

India's neighbor Sri Lanka, plugged itself as a good destination for the BPO industry and an offsite disaster recovery center. Fulton County, Georgia from the USA was pushing to promote Atlanta as a destination for Indian companies that want to have a presence in the US. Pundi Narasimhan, who was part of this delegation, said, "We are overwhelmed by the response we've received. We have decided to invite Indian companies exclusively to Atlanta in April to showcase the city for them."

Having realized the brand potential of IT.COM, some international companies chose to announce their operations in Bangalore at the event. These include Blue Box, a hardware broker firm from the UK, an Irish life sciences company called Randox Labs, Solutions Driven, a UK based company as well as Business Intelligence Technologies headquartered in Australia which opened its Bangalore office.

Pavilions



Like last year, there were ten pavilions this time as well, the only difference being the debut of a dedicated pavilion for the gaming and animation sector and the BPO/Career Mart pavilion.

As per the norm, stalls were judged for innovative and captivating design. Bosch walked away with the coveted overall best stall prize while other winners also put up an attractive show. (Refer box on winners)



Animation companies and training institutes like Paprikaas Animation Studio, Toon School, Animaster, and Ants were prominent exhibitors at the Infrastructure, Animation and Games pavilion. Infrastructure providers like Kolte-Patil from Pune, Magarpatti Township and Development Company, Hiranandani Constructions and Bangalore based Salarpuria group tried to win contracts from IT/ITES companies.

Keeping in view, the ever-increasing demand for young talent in the BPO sector, an exclusive pavilion for the BPO industry focused on career assessment tests and recruitment. Hundreds of students poured into the pavilion to drop in their resumes or to sit for a BPO assessment test to check their BPO aptitude. Over the course of five days, around 500 candidates took the test conducted by hiring consultants, MeriTrac and Eduquity Career Technologies. Some of the companies that took part like Progeon, 24/7 Customer, Adecco PeopleOne Consulting, ICICI OneSource and Naukri.com were literally deluged with resumes.

The Digital Lifestyle pavilion was another crowd puller, which is proof of the tech enthusiasm of the Indian consumer. This year, the pavilion saw the active participation of Taiwanese players like KYE Systems and Acorp which dazzled visitors with their display of the latest digicams, mouse, keyboards, gaming peripherals and MP3 players. First timers at IT.COM, these companies were in Bangalore to strike distributor relationships in the country. Intel was conspicuous with its demo of the digital home, while PalmOne and DVS Electronics were prominent show stealers.

Around 15 Indian states including Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Chandigarh, West Bengal vied with each other to attract companies at the IT states venue. Telecom players like BSNL, Airtel, Reliance, put up a good show at the communications pavilion. Airtel made the most of the opportunity by showcasing its newly launched Blackberries while Reliance preferred to demonstrate its non-voice services. ISPs like Hathway and Iqara Telecom was also present.

Other pavilions such as ICMT Giants, STPI, Software Solutions and Knowledge and R&D drew crowds in hundreds. A striking feature was the predominance of networking and telecom infrastructure companies and products.

Other events



The Rural IT quiz held for the fifth consecutive year drew tremendous participation this year, which has made organizers sit up and try to get an entry into the Guinness Book of Records. Around 62,000 students took part in the zonal rounds compared to 54,000 last year, something unprecedented in terms of participation anywhere in the country and probably in the world.

Displaying knowledge that would put techies to shame, the duo of Samarth Kudalkar and Darryl Lewis of Little Rock Indian School from Udupi came up trumps winning the TCS cash scholarship first prize of Rs 50,000.

The Students Internet World, which was held in Bangalore before, was decentralized this year to cover 27 districts in Karnataka. The event drew an estimated 3,00,000 students. Organizers decided to take it to other places this year, since they felt that schools in and around Bangalore have better access to computers. "We want to promote computer literacy among students, especially in secondary cities were BPO industry is set to take off soon," said government of Karnataka department of IT and BT director Jawaid Akhtar.

Good response



If the ongoing Indo-Australia cricket series was disappointing for Indian fans, it was win-win all the way for both Indian and Aussie companies at IT.COM. The 54-member delegation from the state of Victoria, Australia cemented three Joint Ventures with Indian companies. The ANZ trade center has tied with Australia's e-Centric Innovations to establish an exclusive channel to take Indian capabilities to APAC markets. Mysore based Raman Infotech has tied up with Centennial Media Pvt Ltd for educational software, technology solutions and MIS for Indian and Australian schools. Melbourne based Selco Advanced Components tied up with TVS Interconnect for Fiber to Home (FTH) broadband access.


The Australian team said it estimated to generate trade and investment in the $180 million range over the next three years from the tie-ups at IT.COM.