China wants to copy India's IT success

PUNE, INDIA: "We are here to learn from India's lead and experience in IT. Our strategy is three fold: learn from them, overpass them and then go far away," quipped a Chinese delegation from the Hubei province today after it signed an MoU with Zensar for IT training support.

The delegation earlier today visited the Infosys facility in Hinjewadi and commented, "Our park's scale will be at par with the parks here and next will get bigger and bigger."

Hubei is setting up an India Software Park in Wuhan over 499.7 sq km with incentives on income tax, favourable land policies, R&D fund support, financial subsidies, industrial development area, enterprise hatching area and educational training area etc, Dr. Chunming Li, Vice Governor, Hubei Province said.

As of now, there are 2000 IT enterprises in this province growing at 30 to 40 per cent per annum. Two-thirds of this lot is made up of domestic companies while the rest are foreign companies including the likes of IBM, Motorola, etc. Wuhan has been approved as one of the 11 base cities for service outsourcing in China by three country departments.

Hubei, better known as the optic valley of China given the stronghold of photo-electronics industry, faces employment issues for 60,000 graduates amongst a graduate turnout of 140,000 students in a population of 60 million. China will face a shortage of 200,000 IT positions in the next five years while it generated five million University graduates in 2006 at an employment rate of 60 per cent.

"This arrangement will give our students an edge over their global counterparts. We see more Chinese companies coming to India and vice versa in future," Li said.

The delegation signed an MoU with Zensar for support to 33 Universities and academic institutions in the province. Cities like Shanghai, Shenzen, Beijing and Wuhan would see COEs coming up under the framework that will train students through projects and simulated 'live' environment in tools and techniques in IT and BPO industry.

This may also mark Zensar's setting up a center in one more city besides the existing GDC at Shenzen. The initial intake of students would be 10,000 while the aim is to train 100,000 students in the next three years. They would not necessarily be absorbed in Zensar as it's an open, government-funded program.

IT and BPO firm Zensar is spreading its wings in peripheral areas of IT skill and talent development across the globe. It plans to expand from current 12 Centres Of Excellence (COEs) to 50 in the next 12 to 15 months of which 35 would be in India and rest across the globe. This would include COEs in Poland (Europe), Essex (UK) and Shenzen (China).

Ganesh Natarajan, deputy chairman and managing director, Zensar shared, "In the next two years five per cent of our revenues would be through resource creation. It would mean Rs 50 to 60 crore from COEs by 2010.