Govindraj Ethiraj: Selling the India IT story, to Indians

DOUBLE EDGE

Citibank North America CIO Mitchell J Habib is a suave, consummate speaker. He made a rather energetic presentation to delegates at Nasscom's India Leadership Forum 2006 in Mumbai a few weeks ago.

"I am the client," he said, pacing up and down the stage. He used a slick, animation-rich power point presentation. He explained exactly what he was looking for from Indian companies. He asked Indian IT companies to stop touting their CMM levels. And he told them to hire locally. "The Buy American slogan went away after Toyota opened plants in the United States."

Mitchell also said that a huge amount of IT intellectual property was being created in India. However, this was only being done for other companies. His advice: train your staff to spot IP opportunities. Compensate those who do. And create a sales team to test market it. His parting shot: You are a vendor when you sell me something. You are a partner when you measure your success with mine.

Ronan D McGrath, CIO of Rogers Communications, Canada's largest wireless and cable television provider, among others, was on his first visit to India. McGrath also heads the Information Technology Association of Canada, Nasscom's Canadian counterpart. He pointed out that Canada's ICT market was worth $57 billion, of which 70 per cent constituted exports. And R&D, he said, was $5 billion. His industry, he said, was trying to see where it fitted vis-a-vis countries like India. Note the onus. He then added. "When we looked for the best practices in the world, we found it was India."

Richard Granger, director-general of IT for the British NHS, was advanced into a slot created to make up for President APJ Kalam. The President was delayed by an hour for his keynote address. Granger started off by saying he had two challenges: first, to run the UK's NHS and, second, to stand in for the Indian President. The NHS, founded in 1948, serves 52 million customers out of 28,000 locations. It has 1.2 million staff and sources IT services globally. Indian-developed IT ensures thousands of doctors are paid in time. "There is adverse newspaper coverage if they are not."

British corporations might face union trouble over outsourcing. But the British government itself does not have too many issues, it appeared. Granger said critical technology skills are in short supply in the West. India provided access to a huge tech resource pool with a track record of delivery to high standards. "India can provide industrial strength development capability required to support our challenging reform agenda," he said.

Southern Water CEO Les Dawson began by saying how India had a world-beating education system and the English language, for which the British could claim some credit. "The other thing we've given you is administration and bureaucracy. That I believe you've taken to a new level." He described the change thus, "When I came here, STD stood for Subscriber Trying & Dying. Today, it's one of the best in the world." And on IT, "Give Indians a process and they will perfect it." His closing words. Others are catching up, so move quickly. Look at areas like knowledge services, engineering design and the like. Southern Water is a now privatised utility that supplies water to southern UK.

Ian Hau, a senior vice-president, global services for applications at GlaxoSmithKline, focused on productivity. In the US, one farmer feeds 100 people while in India, 60 farmers feed 100 people. But in IT, he said, an Indian IT professional was almost as productive as an American IT professional. The productivity of core processes and people finally leads to the productivity of the economy, he said.

This was a conference happening in Mumbai, India. There were over 1,350 delegates, of which around 400 (twice as much as last year) came from overseas. Half of these came to India roughly for the first time. And some, like Microsoft CTO Craig Mundie, were there perhaps just to make their presence felt. The majority of the delegates were local.

And yet, there was something fundamentally different. The CIOs from the world over didn't look like they came to "hear" the India story. Like Citibank's Habib or the NHS' Granger, they seemed to know it already. They were here to look out for the latest, like they would in any developed industry, or economy. More than that, they were actually selling India, to Indians. And doing a very good job of it. They shared their experiences and did SWOT analysis. Like they owned the problems. As well as the solutions. Not one complained about poor infrastructure.

Nasscom's Sunil Mehta summed it up. "Visitors ask us nowadays why we make such a big deal about infrastructure." "If you remove traffic jams and immigration queues, you are not too badly off." Not to say that it's not required but Mehta says the perception is that India is undoing its success by focusing excessively on the problems. Like Dawson of Southern Water said with a smile, "I now measure time taken to travel between two points in Bangalore in days." He preferred to see the humour of it all.