Speaking at Connect 2006 in Chennai, S Ramadorai, CEO and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services, said that Tamil Nadu can create over 4 lakh (400,000) jobs in IT by 2011.
He also said there would be a shortfall of half a million skilled people by 2015. "So, the need of the hour is to bridge the gap," he said.
Currently, Tamil Nadu has a share of 14 per cent of the IT-ITES industry in the country, and according to Ramadorai, it has the opportunity to increase the share tremendously as "the state is well positioned to capitalise on its inherent strengths combined with the opportunity brought on by a surging economy, vibrant capital markets and the general bullishness on India."
That is the reason why TCS has expansion plans of additional investments to the tune of Rs 1,200-1,500 crore (Rs 12-15 billion) in the next 2-3 years for Tamil Nadu.
The advantages Tamil Nadu has over other states, according to Ramadorai are that 10% of India's top 500 private and public sector companies are based in Tamil Nadu, and it has a highly diversified economy covering the full range of sectors, from agriculture and mining to heavy manufacturing to the latest high-technology services, with many large home-grown, foreign-owned companies and a vibrant SME sector.
Another big advantage the state enjoys is that its infrastructure, manpower and resources are not entirely concentrated in Chennai. Coimbatore, Madurai, Salem, Tirupur, et cetera are high-potential growth areas.
"Also compared to the rest of India, the state is relatively well off in terms of energy, transportation and educational infrastructure," he added.
Ramadorai also said that "TCS's growth trajectory has in fact run parallel to that of Tamil Nadu's economic development in many ways; we have played a developmental role in the state and have done a number of pioneering activities."
The first TCS campus in India to function as a software facility was inaugurated in 1999 by Tata and the then industries minister Murasoli Maran at Sholinganallur, a location that has now developed as the IT corridor of Chennai.
TCS now has over 13,000 professionals in the state. The company's new facility coming up at Siruseri will be India's largest state-of-the-art development and will have a capacity to accommodate more than 23,000 people. "This has been possible because Tamil Nadu has abundant talent and a strong educational system."
According to Ramadorai, it is necessary to create ecosystems of businesses that need to continuously transfer knowledge and technology to those who will benefit from it. It is to build these bridges that TCS has invested in projects like the M Tech programme on computational Engineering at IIT, Madras, the software engineering lab in PSG College of Engineering in Coimbatore and the Master of Engineering programme in Information Systems at Anna University.
"These initiatives are aimed at transferring new knowledge into academic system and fine-tuning the curriculum to meet industry needs. With an aim to catch them young, TCS pioneers an IT quiz aimed at school children which has become highly popular and has generated enthusiasm and interest in the IT industry."
According to Ramadorai, the challenge is to create a knowledge network of ideas, information and inspiration, that cross-fertilize and feed on each other. The intelligence of a single unit in such an ecosystem is vastly augmented by the intelligence of the whole ecosystem. That's the power of ecosystems."
He said that the "creation of these ecosystems is a collaborative effort; government through its policies and machinery, business through its knowledge and technology base, academia through R&D and its talent building activities, and financial markets by way of monetary support and risk taking ability. They all play a crucial role in the facilitation of an environment where ecosystems can flourish."
He also warned that "as a country, we are at the brink of a make-or-break opportunity and we must capitalise on it, and we need states like Tamil Nadu to lead the way."
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