The Indian IT/ BPO players seemed to downplay the fact that IT growth, which was projected at 19-20 per cent, slipped to 13-15 per cent in the last quarter, signalling a decline of almost 30 per cent.

At the Nasscom Leadership Summit in Mumbai, N R Narayana Murthy of Infosys [Get Quote] agreed, "It is a tough economic challenge. I would suggest to focus on customer-end sales investments. Instead of sending five people, send 10 executives."

On the second day of the summit, Indian vendors discussed ways to tackle the financial crisis head-on with innovation being the focal point. Most believed that there is enough opportunity within the country for the industry.

According to Harsh Manglik, chairman and managing director, Accenture, "This is not for the first time that a crisis has hit the world. We need to look at newer business verticals such as rural healthcare. There are very few solutions and services catering to this segment." Suresh Vaswani, joint CEO, Wipro [Get Quote] Technologies seemed to agree. He said, "The focus should be getting close to the customers and become a partner rather than just a vendor."

Pramod Bhasin, CEO & president of Genpact, a leading outsourcing company, felt that companies must brace themselves for a price deflation.

"As the number of company's bidding to bag projects gets competitive, the deal prices will only get sharper."

Accenture's Group chief executive Kevin Campbell confessed to feeling the pricing pressures too. "We are all vying to get more work so that we can keep the contracts running."

Most leaders were of the opinion that the companies would probably have to shed more employees in near future to keep themselves nimble enough. Said Salil Parekh, CEO of Capgemini, "The bottom-performers will have to go as companies can no longer afford to have a larger bench."