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Japan tsunami a worry for India Inc

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: Though the earthquake with a magnitude of 8.9 that hit northeastern Japan on Friday, generating a tsunami as high as 10 metres, may not affect India directly, in all possibility it is a worrying development for Indian enterprises who have operations in Japan.

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At least six people were killed, 20 injured and many were missing, including a number of children who were sucked into the sea, the public broadcaster NHK reported.

There are many Indian IT companies that have operations in Japan, HCL, i GATE Global Solutions, Infosys, L&T Infotech, MindTree, Patni, Satyam, TCS, to mention a few, and the plight of a the employees there is a major cause of worry for them.

However, many Indian IT majors clarified that all their employees are safe.

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"Following the massive earthquake and resultant Tsunami that hit Japan earlier today, we are relieved to inform you that all our employees in Japan are safe," Infosys said in a statement.

"Our local teams in these cities are making arrangements to support our employee's requirements at this time," the statement added. Infosys, which began its Japanese operations in 1996 has an office in Tokyo and several employees in the cities of Fukuoka and Nagoya.

When contacted by CIOL, Wipro said all its employees are safe. “Necessary emergency procedures have been activated and we are continuing to monitor the situation,” it said.

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Meanwhile, TCS, India's biggest software firm said, "As per the latest information available, all our employees in Japan are safe."

California-based software firm iGate also said that all of its employees in Japan are safe and there was no impact heard as of now.

"No one was injured and it was business as usual for all the employees in Japan... Both employee interest as well as client work remained unaffected today", iGate,  which has an office in Yokohama and an overall employee base of over 100 in Japan, said in a statement.

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Tata Elxsi also said that its employees in Japan are safe and there has been no damage to its facilities. "Necessary emergency procedures have been activated and we are continuing to monitor the situation," it said in a statement.

According to a Ministry of Earth Sciences official, the tsunami warnings have been issued to east Asian countries and not in the Indian Ocean. Tsunami alerts were issued in the Philippines, Taiwan, Guam and Russia as well as islands in the Pacific, and Indonesia.

Following the 2004 tsunami, India in 2007 had set up a tsunami warning centre run by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad under the ministry of earth sciences.

Eve as more news about the disaster is pouring in from different places, the social media is flooded with tsumani details and pictures. YouTube's CitizenTube channel featured what it described as raw, eyewitness videos uploaded by people in Japan of the earthquake and its aftermath, according to a CNet blog.

Search giant Google, in its efforts to assist the relief and rescue operations, has launched its Person Finder service to help users to search for information about people by name or leave information about people in Japanese.

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