IT firms eye Japanese market

With prominent Indian IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, Infosys Technologies, Zensar Technologies and Satyam Computer Services increasing their presence in Japan, the world’s second largest IT services market is becoming a lucrative market for India.

Nasscom pegs the Japanese IT services market at $108 billion, India’s share in the market being only $1-1.5 billion (around Rs 4,900-7,500 crore). Offshoring is limited to 8-10 per cent of the total market, with China being Japan's biggest offshoring partner, accounting for over 50 per cent of the total offshoring. "We see India's share of IT exports to Japan growing in the next 5-7 years. This increased diversification to Japan has got nothing to do with the current economic downturn," asserts Som Mittal, Nasscom president.

However, the task is easier said than done. Japan has low overall IT spending, with spend to sales ratio being around 1-1.5 per cent for most industries, as compared to around 3.5-4 per cent in the US. BFSI and manufacturing are the highest spenders among all industries. Zensar Technologies currently has an all Japanese team of 250 people in Japan. The company gets almost six per cent of its revenues, less than $10 million (Rs 49 crore) from Japan but sees it doubling to $20 million (Rs 98 crore) in three years.

"We have been in Japan for six years and it is a slow market in terms of culture. It is a different market and the number of young people who can take up IT jobs is very less," says Ganesh Natrajan, Global CEO, Zensar. Nucleus Software, which gets 50 per cent of its revenues from Japan, has 100 employees there but the company doesn't want to increase this number. "Japan is a tough proposition in terms of language and culture and has low tolerance for mistakes," says Vishnu R Dusad, CEO and MD of Nucleus Software.

Wipro, for instance, has been in Japan for close to 10 years. Though it is growing at a rate of 35-40 per cent in the Japanese market, in terms of revenues, Japan contributes only 5 per cent.

For Patni, with 5 per cent of its revenues coming from Japan, it has become a focus area. But the company is keen that its engineers are trained in the local language and culture.

To overcome the culture and language barriers, Nasscom is tying up with government agencies to encourage young people to learn Japanese. "There is a need for language training in Spanish, Korean and Japanese so that some new markets can be tapped," says Natarajan.