The India of IT outsourcing and global business, with its corollary of slickly dressed executives in fancy offices, is rarely associated with the other, less-savoury India of caste and gender prejudice.
Yet, a new survey conducted by London-headquartered outsourcing advisory firm Quantum Step reveals that in continental Europe, the latter impacts on the perception of the former.
Quantum Step surveyed 35 top companies across Europe, asking them to discuss the barriers they felt existed in doing business with Indian outsourcing firms.
The results varied across countries.
Companies in the Nordic region pointed out the “awkwardness” with which Indian men interacted with women. “Often, the Indian teams that are sent to make a sales pitch, don’t include even a single woman,” explains Sridhar Vedala, Quantum Step’s Managing Director. “But the people they are pitching to are commonly women.”
“Business deals are discussed over drinks and dinner, and these guys don’t know how to handle it.”
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Another complaint listed was the difference in the way Indians were perceived to behave towards their European clients and towards their own Indian subordinates.
Moreover, across the continent, survey respondents felt Indians displayed a reluctance to disagree, a tendency to over-commit and a lack of transparency in sharing information.
A final point made had to do with the perception that Indians working onshore in Europe made little attempt to integrate with local employees, preferring instead to socialise and live with other Indians.
But despite these sobering findings, Vedala insists that continental Europe is gradually opening up to do business with Indian outsourcing companies.
“There is already significant activity in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) region, as well as in Germany,” he says.
The new interest, according to him, is coming from the Nordic countries, home to heavyweights like Ikea, Ericsson, Nokia and Shell.
“In Germany, if I contact 10 companies about potential business, may be two will respond. But amongst the Nordics, seven out of 10 companies I contact get back with interest.”
That continental Europe is opening up to the possibilities of offshoring is confirmed by the experience of Indian majors. TCS has seen its European share doubling to 30 per cent over the last 10 years.
Though Europeans perceive India as tradition-bound, the continent also suffers from its own inability to free itself of rigid mindsets.
“In Europe, IT is still thought of very much as a core function of a company and there is continued reluctance to outsource it,” says Vedala. He names companies like German pharma giant Bayer and chemical major BASF.
“Operationally, these are companies that are very globalised but they still retain IT services inhouse, employing upwards of 20,000 people for the job.”
The recession has begun to force a change in thinking to some extent, as companies realise the difference between sinking and swimming may lie in outsourcing. But, Indian companies face a particular set of challenges when trying to breach the market.
“In continental Europe, relationship building is as important as the bottom line numbers. In the UK or the US, being purely revenue-focused can work as a strategy, but not on the continent,” says Vedala.
He says Indian IT companies tend to base themselves in the UK, with the idea that they can just send a few people across to the continent as and when needed for projects.
“Indian companies focus on verticals but are not regionally focused. That’s not good enough. You don’t just need a guy who knows banking, you need a guy who knows France.”
Some of the bigger players in India have cottoned on to this fact, and companies like TCS, Infosys, HCL and Cognizant have begun to invest in the continent in a more sustainable fashion.
As they garner more clients, more European companies are, in turn, displaying greater comfort levels with both the idea of offshoring, as well as of working with Indians.
Vedala points to his own company as evidence. “The idea of an Indian software programmer has been acceptable to the Europeans for a while now, but it’s only very recently that they have been able to accept Indians in the IT consultative or advisory space.”
Quantum Step was founded only around a year ago and is the first Indian outsourcing consultancy to operate in Europe. “We are competing directly against the likes of Gartner and Mckinsey and we are making a go of it,” he concludes.