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Indian IT Firms Embedded in Silicon Valley's Global Business Strategies

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:04:30 -0600

According to a report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institue, a new study reveals a significant amount of growth between businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area and India. Though there is a lot of success and promise to go with that, there is also some challenges ahead.

The report was released by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and sponsored by TiE Silicon Valley, a South Asian business group. The report said tht skilled Indians came to the Bay Area in the early 1980’s and these skilled workers included engineers and programmers. Those who came to the Silicon Valley area from India include major figures who played critical roles in the formation of Brocade, Cerent, Sun Microsystems and Hotmail.

The report also gives numerous examples as to how the relationship between the Indians and the Bay Area got closer as the tech economy went global. Some examples include the following:

· India - Oracle's fourth biggest market worldwide

· India is home to Symantec's biggest engineering site, excluding the U.S. Indian employees work on over 80 percent of the company’s products

· 33% of Adobe's engineering workforce worlwide is in India.

· More than 50% of developers in India work on Sun platforms

· The largest firm in India's IT market is Hewlett Packard.

· Levi Strauss is spread out across 80 cities in India with 450 outlets

· Cisco's 2^nd biggest headquarters is located in Bangalore

· In 780 Indian cities, eBay has 2 million users; eBay also has 10,000 dealers across India

· Draper International based in San Francisco unveiled the first India-dedicated venture fund

· 40 Bay Area venture companies either have activities in India or are under Indian leadership.

Sean Randolph, CEO of the Economic Institute said in a comment, “The notion of India as an offshore labor source and low wages is outdated,” adding , "India's growing capacity for high-end services, research and product development is transforming it into a global technology hub."

He added,. "India and its companies are becoming more deeply embedded in Bay Area companies' global strategies," reports ABClocal.

Jacob Cherian is a staff writer for OffhsoreAdvisore, which developes tools for businesses interested in offshoring to Asian countries like India.

Indian IT Firms Embedded in Silicon Valley's Global Business Strategies

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:01:05 -0600

The report also gives numerous examples as to how the relationship between the Indians and the Bay Area got closer as the tech economy went global. Some examples include the following:

· India - Oracle's fourth biggest market worldwide

· India is home to Symantec's biggest engineering site, excluding the U.S. Indian employees work on over 80 percent of the company’s products

· 33% of Adobe's engineering workforce worlwide is in India.

· More than 50% of developers in India work on Sun platforms

· The largest firm in India's IT market is Hewlett Packard.

· Levi Strauss is spread out across 80 cities in India with 450 outlets

· Cisco's 2^nd biggest headquarters is located in Bangalore

· In 780 Indian cities, eBay has 2 million users; eBay also has 10,000 dealers across India

· Draper International based in San Francisco unveiled the first India-dedicated venture fund

· 40 Bay Area venture companies either have activities in India or are under Indian leadership.

He added,. "India and its companies are becoming more deeply embedded in Bay Area companies' global strategies," reports ABClocal.

Jacob Cherian is a staff writer for OffhsoreAdvisore, which developes tools for businesses interested in offshoring to Asian countries like India.

Outsourcing Firm Ciber Doubles India Staff

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:49:48 -0600

Media reports say U.S. outsourcing firm Ciber is planning to double its headcount in its India centers located in Bangalore and Chennai. . The IT services firm reportedly made the decision due to higher demand from clients. Additionally, Ciber is seeking to take advantage of India as an offshoring site..

Ciber,is projected to spike its staff to 659 by the end of next year at its Chennai and Bangalore – the company which takes in $1.2 billion in revenues is planning to double its employees.Tony Hadazi, executive VP of Ciber, said, “Unlike other companies which see them (India) as scale, we see them as strategic and helps us in addressing the requirements of our clients faster.” reports The Economic Times.

With more than 8,500 employees worldwide and 60 centers within the U.S, Ciber is poised to service its customer base efficiently. This onsite presence along with the benefits of Indian offshoring will provide Ciber with an opportunity to service its clients around the clock. . Hadazi, “Our deployment is a differentiator and we are pretty customer-centric by deploying teams at their site.” The Indian support centers are an integral part of Ciber’s European in addition to its U.S. market. Incidentally, some of Ciber’s U.S. clients are serviced exclusively by the support center in Bangalore.

Moreover, Ciber’s clients have also been calling for a move toward offshoring. Though Ciber’s clients have not engaged in outsourcing, they are getting used to the idea now that they are taking notice of its benefits.

According to a Ciber executive, “We have customers who have never done offshoring but they are gradually getting comfortable with it and this percentage is increasing.” Hadazi explained that Ciber has a separate staff working in the Indian market – the division has already made strides in bagging Indian clients, reports The Economic Times.

Ciber is also taking advantage of global relationships with companies such as Ford Motor and Philips by setting up centers for them in the subcontinent..

Jacob Cherian is a staff writer for OffshoreAdvisor, which provides businesses with insight and tools to take advantage of the global outsourcing scene - directory of web design companies, directory of application development companies, and a directory of database development.

Outsourcing Firm Ciber Doubles India Staff

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:49:16 -0600

Ciber is also taking advantage of global relationships with companies such as Ford Motor and Philips by setting up centers for them in the subcontinent..

CBI Arrests Satyam Audit Head for Fabricating Books of Accounts

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:57:25 -0600

V.S. Prabhakar Gupta, Senior Vice-President cum Global Head of Audit cell of Mahindra Satyam (erstwhile Satyam Computers) was today (21^st Nov’09) arrested by Central Bureau of Investigation on charges of fabricating books of accounts of Satyam Computers and conspiring with other co- accused to defraud the computer giant. Gupta was later produced in court and was remanded to judicial custody till 26^th November. Gupta held the same position in the parent company.

The arrest came after the CBI team, which went to Mauritius for investigating certain bank details, returned with concrete evidence of financial manipulations by rerouting funds- that were earlier diverted to Mauritius- back to India to fictitious firms set up by the accused. CBI is now preparing to file a second charge sheet in the case

Incidentally, Gupta is the 10^th accused in the multi-crore Satyam scam along with two other accused from Price Waterhouse, three SCSL employees, the founder of Satyam Ramalinga Raju and his bother Rama Raju. All the accused are on judicial remand except Suryanaryana Raju, who is out on anticipatory bail.

Hackett Research: 300,000 IT Jobs Gone in 2009

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:46:29 -0600

According to the Hackett Group about 300,000 IT jobs have been deleted this year. This increase in job losses will acout for almost 2 million tech positions from 2000-2014, reports ZDNet.

Hackett reports that IT is one sector that is taking the hit for firms cutting back on back-office jobs outsourced to countries like India, Philippines, China, Vietnam and Eastern Europe.This year alone about 630,000 back office positions will be swiped in some of the biggest companies in the world. In general, the research group says there is an "extended jobless recovery" within industries like finance, procurement, HR, IT among other general and administrative (G&A) areas.

Hackett states, "Longer-term, Hackett’s research estimates that nearly 3.6 million G&A jobs in North America and Europe will have been eliminated between 2000 and 2014. More than half of these losses, or nearly 2 million of these jobs, are in IT, making it the largest back office area to be hit by a wide margin," in an online report by ZDNET.com

The company came up with the figures after looking at 4,000 companies around the world, capping $1 billion in income. Hackett says the causes of job losses are relatively easy to decipher as firms are seeking to improve profit losses and there is more offshoring, and outsourcing going on.

Indian Outsourcers Find Europe a Tough Market Amid Recession

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:00:46 -0600

In the wake of recession, many big name Indian outsourcers turned to European clients to avert the decline in demand in the U.S.

However, this attempt has been in vain, as Europeans are resistant to outsourcing and they have several outsourcing giants of their own, says Forrester Group. Capgemini is a leading outsourcer headquartered in Paris, France.

According to Forrester's prinicpal analyst, Sudin Apte, Indian firms are not attuned to the nuances of European culture and this makes it difficult for them to compete with rival suppliers with a large European presence, reports pcworld.com

Another problem facing Indian outsourcers is that they only have a few line of services as opposed to MNCs that have set up a variety of business services in Europe. Additionally, most European businesses require outsourcer employees to work on its premises. Indian firms often do not have the capacity to keep their staff onsite.

Apte added that Indian outsourcers just are not able to compete in Europe, because they do not have much staff there.

GM Announces It Will Pay Back Gov’t Loan With Gov’t Money

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:28:30 -0600

GM will be begin paying back the TARP money in December [1], the company announced [2] this morning. It’s a statement in need of a little context.

Basically, GM will be using a portion of its $50 billion in TARP bailout money [3] it received to in turn repay another portion of the TARP loans.

The reason GM can do this is because when GM emerged from bankruptcy, it struck a deal with the Treasury Department to carve up its obligation to the government in four different ways.

They are, briefly: 1) $986 million remained an obligation of the old GM, the husk of the company left behind through its bankruptcy restructuring, and will never be seen again, 2) $6.71 billion remained as an interest-bearing loan, 3) $2.1 billion of the obligation was converted to preferred stock, which is a form of equity ownership that pays a fixed dividend, and 4) the rest was converted to a 60.8 percent equity stake in GM.

So, for GM to completely pay back the government, GM would have to completely repay the $6.71 billion loan with interest, purchase the government’s preferred shares (as well as keeping up dividend payments), and Treasury would have to make a pretty penny, in the range of $40 billion, selling its common shares after GM goes public again.

In a comprehensive overview [4] (PDF) earlier this month, the GAO deemed that scenario “unlikely.” The former chief of the auto task force went farther [5], saying that $20 billion of the $50 billion given to GM [3] probably won’t be coming back.

GM’s announcement today was just about No. 2, that $6.71 billion loan—it will begin repaying next month, it said. But the money to repay the loan will come from a portion of the government money it has set aside. In other words, GM has not actually drawn down every dollar of the $50 billion. It has about $13.4 billion [1] sitting in an escrow account, and it’s tagged $8.1 billion [2] of that to repay loans it owes both the U.S. and Canadian governments. (Incidentally, GM also got a $1.3 billion loan from Germany in support of its European unit.)

And there’s your context. Essentially, the good news is that GM thinks it won’t need to draw down more than about $40 billion of the $50 billion the U.S. gave it.

As with all other recipients [6] of the bailout, we continually track GM’s progress towards making the taxpayer whole. Since last December, GM has paid the Treasury $178 million in interest (before bankruptcy) and dividend payments. Meanwhile, about $50.4 billion remains outstanding.

Note: Not dealt with here for simplicity’s sake is $884 million which Treasury used to purchase a portion of GM’s equity in GMAC [7], its financing arm. In exchange, Treasury received a 35 percent equity stake in GMAC.

SITEX 2009 Coming Up To Singapore Expo

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:32:18 -0600

After IT Show 09, PC Show 09 and Comex 09, its time of the year again for the upcoming SITEX 2009, Singapore. It is also the time IT gadgets enthusiasts out there to hunt for some bargains. Although, the economy is still recovery, many of us are still feeling the squeeze in our budgets which made these exhibitions or shows extremely popular. Christmas is round the corner and this show is exactly the best place to get some of those gifts to prevent from last minute shopping later on.

SITEX 2009 will be held from 26 November 2009 - 29 November 2009 at Singapore Expo Hall 5 ,6 & Foyer 2 Level 1. The adminision is free Public. Operation timing will be from 11am to 9pm.

For more details, visit the official SITEX Website.

Cheque Distribution Ceremony held

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:48:54 -0600

LAPH distributed rehabilitation cheques among widow women.

CHITRAL: Legal Awareness Program for Human Rights (LAPH) distributed cheques of rehabilitation among widow women of Chitral. District Nazim Chitral Haji Maghfirat Shah was chief guest on the occasion while the ceremony was presided over by Sartaj Ahmad Khan Tehsil Nazim Chitral. Addressing on the occasion Maghfirat Shah highly hailed social services of LAPH who supporting widow and deserving women of Chitral in term of rehabilitation to enable them to gain livelihood with an easy and honor way. As well as providing free legal aid to needy and poor people of Chitral, supporting talent and poor students to continue their education, improving capacity building, advocacy etc. He stressed on the recipients who were given rehabilitation cheques to not waste this amount and emphasized to invest the amount of rehabilitation in mini business at their home level and to get its profit on daily basis by this way they can be saved from begging and never hit from frustrations. Tehsil Nazim Sartaj Ahmad Khan also appreciated Trocaire the donor agency who supporting people of Chitral through LAPH regarding awareness rising in social development, Human rights, poverty reduction, and increasing literacy ratio at Chitral. He stressed upon LAPH and suggested for imparting vocational training to women folk to improve their skill capacity along with giving them cash payment. LAPH distributed cheque worth rupees 90000 of rehabilitation. LAPH also handed over cheque to president Press Club Chitral Shah Murad Baig for exposure visit who was arranged by LAPH in collaboration with district government of Chitral. Earlier that chairman LAPH briefed the chief guest and other participants regarding progress, achievement and mechanism of his organization. A large number of people belonging to all walks of life including Akhunzada Rahmatullah Naib Amir JI Chitral attended the cheqe giving ceremony.

G.H. Farooqi PO box No. 50 GPO Chitral Pakistan phone No. 03025989602, 03469002167, 0943-302295, 414418
Email: gulhamad@gmail.com