'The race is now on for Indian IT firms to develop their AI prowess and focus on a software-first approach to services as the people element becomes more complicated with Trump's expected new regulations.'
'It is the responsibility of industry to take the very bright talent whose knowledge of software engineering basics is very high, and then give them additional skills.'
American chip behemoth Nvidia Corp and India's retail-to-refining giant Reliance Industries on Thursday unveiled their goal to build a formidable AI computing infrastructure in the country. Highlighting the tie-up, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, made a broader appeal: India should focus on "manufacturing" AI, rather than racing to build semiconductor fabs. As part of this collaboration, Nvidia will reportedly supply its Blackwell AI processors to power Reliance's one-gigawatt data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
Certain changes in the past two or three years could have a long-term structural impact on the IT services market.
'We will see a lot of investments from the private sector.' 'As long as we are not impacted by some global events, I think we will be in a strong place.'
Krithi Krithivasan is the kind of person one might look to when the need is to calm things down and put things back on track.
Despite higher gross additions, growth in overall customer base has been tepid for these companies, says Debasis Mohapatra.
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
Attrition in India is expected to stay high as 34 per cent of the employees are extremely or very likely to shift to a new job in the next 12 months, a survey showed on Thursday. PwC's "India Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022" provided insights into important employee aspirations, drivers, and expectations from their workplace in the next 12 months. Among all the age groups, millennials are most likely to seek new employment, with 37 per cent stating that they are "extremely or very likely" to switch. For Gen Z and Gen X, this figure stands at 33 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively.
'Generic skills are in abundance, but technological advancements have left staple skills redundant.' 'It is why employers are now looking for alternate sources of hiring -- deploying gig workers, looking at Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities for relevant talent.'
The immediate challenge facing Indian firms will be the consolidation that will take place in the Western financial services industry as leading firms go belly up and are quickly taken over by the handful of firms which have not lost either their capital or the ability to raise fresh funds. The consolidation in the industry will affect not just its own staffing but also the vendors. With severe cuts in budgets all round, outsourcing spend is likely to be affected.
Keshav Murugesh, CEO of the Nasdaq-listed WNS, discusses the impact of the Trump administration on BPO and BPM industry with Ayan Pramanik.
Of the 2,562 customer complaints received between January 2020 and March 2021, a majority relate to illegal apps. At least two dozen suicide cases have been reported, perpetrated by the harassment by loan app operators, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The analyst community tracking the Indian IT services industry took special note of Accenture's first quarter (Q1) performance, which showcased the rapid growth of its consulting business that outperformed its outsourcing business. Bookings indicate that the trend will continue. Consulting bookings increased 41.6 per cent year-on-year (yoy) to $9.4 billion, higher than the 17.6 per cent growth in outsourcing to $7.4 billion. The management commentary was also more bullish on the consulting business.
Electric vehicle market is likely to attract investments of Rs 94,000 crore over the next five years and is expected to generate business opportunities in the real estate sector, according to a joint report by Colliers India and Indospace. The report 'Electric Mobility in Full Gear' mentioned that the electric vehicle (EV) industry in India is currently at a nascent stage but it is likely to grow, backed by government initiatives and a move towards recognising climate change. "India is taking a step towards sustainability and has vowed to cut its carbon emissions. "At the recently concluded CoP26 summit, India pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. "In India, the transport sector is currently the third-largest emitter of CO2. This is leading to increased thrust on EVs in India," it said.
To cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government on Wednesday liberalised guidelines for voice-based BPOs removing the distinction between domestic and international units as well as permitting interconnectivity between all types of OSP centres. Broadly, the rules would allow global companies, say an airline, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that required dedicated, separate infrastructure previously. Moreover, the restrictions on data interconnectivity between any BPO (business process outsourcing) centre of the same company, a group company or any unrelated company has been done away with, allowing for massive flexibility in resource management for BPO operations.
Bhasin will now take over as a non-executive vice-chairman of the company.
The report said recent concerns about manpower like attrition, quality of talent and rising wages, have compelled IT companies to take a relook at their so far successful offshore business model more than ever before.
Will Infosys, which will announce its Q2 results on Tuesday, be able to break away from the single-digit growth rates the IT services sector has been seeing?
Words like business process outsourcing (BPO) and offshoring may not exist in the IT dictionary by 2015. Substitutes like business service outsourcing and global delivery model (GDM), necessitated by the changing business model of IT firms, are likely to replace them over the next seven years.
TCS is tapping an emerging opportunity called IT modernisation, which potentially could be a growth driver for the entire IT services industry for the next two to three years, says Raghu Krishnan.
What is your USP?
Why should your customers come to only you and nobody else? What particular problem are you solving? Solve these puzzles before launching a stat up suggests Rajiv Talreja.
Indian software companies have a huge potential to grow. And investors are likely to reap advantages of the same.
Outsourcing is just no more about cost savings but also companies' accessibility to right talent and geographic expansion, a latest survey on business outsourcing revealed.
The promoter-brothers, distant cousins to IndiGo's Rahul Bhatia, are eyeing Air India's ground handling subsidiary to augment their aviation services business even as they make a big play in EVs.
'The list of things to be done or added or removed will keep growing and it will be a while before the emerging models settle down into lasting structures,' predicts Umesh Shrikhande, CEO, Taproot Dentsu.
Experts said this would not only reduce Infosys' dependence on the H1B visa, which has seen increased restrictions under the current US administration. It will also help the company in building an employee pyramid for its future operations.
Following the footsteps of call centres, data processing and accounting firms, lawyers in Canada have begun outsourcing legal work to India.
The second quarter of FY22 continued to show double digit growth for the top four IT services providers, with every vertical and geography growing well, even though the total contract value (TCV) looked soft for all the players. The trend was first evident in Accenture's Q4 numbers, which saw its TCV in outsourcing deals softer. A soft TCV does not mean that growth is declining, but it does point to the trend of few and scarcer mega deals.
Experts believe modifying the placement model is a good decision given the changes that campus recruitment has undergone globally, says Vinay Umarji.
A candidate with good communication skills, critical thinking and problem solving abilities will have a higher chance of being hired.
The IT major is donning a new face for the changing times, says Ayan Pramanik.
The IT major is donning a new face for the changing times, says Ayan Pramanik.
Also looks at setting up development and training centres in the US to tide over visa-related issues
Pankaj Sarma (name changed), associate professor with an Indian business school, earns Rs 1 lakh every month for evaluating papers written by students in the US. This is apart from his salary of Rs 60,000 as per University Grants Commission scale.
Leading software outsourcing firm Cognizant Technology on Tuesday reported a 15.4 per cent rise in net profit at $319.6 million in the quarter to September driven by a strong ramp up in demand for outsourcing services, up from $276.9 million a year ago.
Analysts see HCL's Rs 1,780 crore deal with Reader's Digest and another half-a-dozen big deals signed in the past three months by Indian IT firms, encompassing both global and domestic markets, as evidence that the outsourcing story continues to progress as the best option for companies to cut costs in the current difficult economic environment.
In the outsourcing context, providers have traditionally looked at building and deploying solutions that alleviate the client's business challenges without disturbing the status quo drastically.
The study further said there will be an increase in the number of features in these low-cost handsets in the next five years.