IT firms fight Mumbai floods

BANGALORE: With torrential rains flooding India's financial capital Mumbai yet again today, IT companies in the city were viewing the situation with caution.

While some companies like i-Flex Solutions remained closed, others continued to have a regular working day albeit low employee turnout. In some companies the attendance was below 50 percent.

TCS, the country's biggest software exporter, is working today. A company spokesman informed CyberMedia News that most employees are working from home. TCS works out of nine locations in Mumbai.

“Unlike last Tuesday's fierce downpour, the situation is better now since there is power and the networks are running. The attendance at the offices is however low,” he said.

MphasiS BFL also registered low attendance as TCS. Infosys, which declared a holiday for its employees at its Pune center following the heavy rains last week, was working as usual.

However, the BPOs and call centers in Mumbai told a different story. Most of them had to route their calls and work to other locations like Pune, Bangalore and Delhi.

A WNS company spokesperson said that the volumes of the company's non-voice processes had come down by 10 percent due to the heavy downpour. However, there won't be any immediate effect on business.

Debashish Ghosh, COO, Wipro BPO said, “ There is no employee attendance because of the rains. In line with Wipro's policy on disaster recovery, we have routed some of our volumes to other DR sites. However, we are watching and evaluating the situation an a daily basis.”

Most companies were unanimous in saying that the heavy monsoon rains would not disrupt business in any way.

i-Flex, which was closed today, would have a compensatory working day this weekend.

Mumbai recorded heavy rains today, but not as high as the record-breaking rains on July 26th. However, civic authorities and police repeatedly urged the public to remain indoors unless in case of emergency as many roads were waterlogged. A holiday was declared for schools and colleges.

According to the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, devastating rains have caused losses of around Rs 2500 crore.

The Meteorological Department predicted "heavy to very heavy rains" over the next 48 hours due to a depression in the Bay of Bengal.

(With inputs from CyberMedia News, Mumbai)