NTT Data looks to partner India start-ups

Tokyo- headquartered company has a headcount of 75,000 globally - of which over 10,000 based out of India across company's 11 facilities

Japanese information technology (IT) services firm NTT Data looks to deepen its relationship with the growing Indian start-up ecosystem. The company, which partners start-ups across the world, is working with two Indian start-ups, SmartCloud Infotech and MobiSoft, and is open to more such alliances.

“The market is moving very fast and so is technology. So, in some cases, it doesn’t make sense to build something by your own and we would rather partner with someone else,” said Ravi Kumar, senior vice-president global, NTT Data. “But we do it on a case-to-case basis. Our overall vision is to build in-house capabilities. But if there are some specific areas where we need to partner with someone, we are open to it.”

NTT Data is part of the NTT (Nippon Telecom & Telegraph) Group, and has annual revenues of over $1.33 billion. The firm provides advisory services, application development and management, business intelligence, analytics, business process outsourcing, cloud services and infrastructure services, among others. The Tokyo- headquartered company has a headcount of 18,000 globally - of which over 10,000 are based out of India across the company's 11 facilities.

SmartCloud Infotech, which designs and develops interactive games, has partnered with NTT Data for several projects over the past two years. For these projects, the SmartCloud Infotech team has worked out of NTT Data's facilities, getting exposed to the Japanese company's methodologies. MobiSoft, which develops android and iPhone mobile applications, has collaborated with NTT Data from staff supplemental to end-to-end mobile outsourcing.

“We bring such collaboration to ensure that we get the best value to our customers while being able to tap into the vast network of local and global talent available in the technology ecosystem,” said Kumar.

As entrepreneurial culture grows in India, several multinational companies are evaluating options to closely work with start-ups in the country. Last month, Nasdaq-listed CA Technologies had inaugurated a research and development (R&D) centre in Bangalore with a view to benefiting from the growing start-up culture in the city.

Earlier this year, CA Technologies had invested with venture capital firm IDG Ventures India to get early visibility into enterprise software start-ups in the country. The company had said Bangalore has “its own unique sense of strengths when it comes to entrepreneurs and start-ups”, and that it was keen to benefit from the same.

“Globally, we partner with multiple companies and having presence in silicon valley offers various options of startups that one can benefit from. The thing is that there is absolutely no point in re-inventing something that has already been done,” said Kumar.

He said the start-up and innovation culture in India currently is “very encouraging” and entrepreneurs are moving in the right direction. “Compared to where we were four years ago, there is a sea-change today.”