Subprime woes may not hit India: Nasscom

Indian information technology companies may see technology budgets of their financial services customers take a hit if the US subprime mortgage crisis drags on over the medium term, said National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) Vice-Chairman Ganesh Natarajan.

But there was no evidence of any sluggishness yet, said Natarajan, who is also the managing director of Zensar Technologies.

"There is no immediate sluggishness in tech spending. But if there is a medium-term impact on all financial services, there will certainly be an impact on their spending budgets," Natarajan said.

The US and the UK markets together account for near 80 per cent of India's software exports.

Recently, the country's second largest business process outsourcing firm, WNS Holdings, announced that one of its customers in the mortgage business, First Magnus Financial Corporation, has ended its outsourcing contract.

The termination of the contract forced WNS to cut its guidance for 2007-08 (April-March).

India information technology services companies have significant exposure to banking and financial services industry.

For example, insurance, banking and financial services segment contributed 30 per cent of Infosys Technologies' revenues in the June quarter of 2007-08. However, few firms have clients in the mortgage processing or subprime business.

"We (Zensar Technologies) have no exposure to the mortgage industry whatsoever and even our dependence on the financial services industry is only 11 per cent with less than half of that in the US," Natarajan said.

Encouraged by the low dependence of Indian IT services firms to the mortgage business, many brokerages including Citigroup have told investors not to fear any material impact on earnings of Indian IT services players.

In the event of the crisis dragging on, Natarajan said financial services companies and banks "may cut back a little on new development though they might accelerate outsourcing to reduce costs."

He was confident that billing rates were unlikely to be hit either in the short or medium term on account of the crisis.