In an interview with Hrishikesh Joshi, N Chandrasekaran, CEO & Managing Director, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) talks about Nasscom, the information technology (IT) industry and technology spends of Indian IT companies. Edited excerpts:
How do you look at the current market scenario as far as IT business is concerned?
The global economy is going through a turmoil. There are pressures on markets from the different industries. I have met over 100 C-level executives in the past few months and found they are not as negative as it's portrayed. Every industry has faced this challenge, but the situation is far different this time than it was in 2008.
People are not panicking now. They are ready to deal with it and doing it in a very systematic manner. One of the reasons is technology. It is key to everything and we have adequate solutions to face the problems. We are in a industry where there are tremendous opportunities and whatever you do, technology plays a key role, whether it is banking, financial services and insurance, automotive, aerospace or manufacturing.
Do you think the current technology spend or R&D (research and development) investments are sufficient as compared to other countries or it has gone down from the last two years?
The overall tech spend is increasing continuously. In the last few years, Indian IT industry has grown from $10 million to $100 billion. According to Nasscom estimates, it will reach up to $225 billion by 2020.
How is TCS prepared when it comes to technology spend or R&D investments?
We have realised technology is everything. We see a lot of opportunities. We don’t look at this from quarter-to-quarter. On the technology front, there are lots of changes taking place. TCS is constantly investing on R&D. It is no longer a traditional engineering. If you see any product of any industry, it is highly dependent on software. We should invest more on setting up labs and developing tools. More, over 60 to 70 per cent of the products are software based. We have the biggest global R&D centre in Pune. We will keep expanding on that.
You mentioned about Nasscom restructuring in your speech. How will that happen?
For that, you have to wait for a few months. I will share a media headline with you. But if we talk about Nasscom, in the last 15-years it has seen many changes. Basically, it is supporting growth of the IT industry. It is doing very well. It is probably the only goal setting and most successful industry body we ever had.
What about talent availability in India? Is our BPO industry under pressure because of China or the Philippines?
There is enough talent in India. We are very strong in providing software services, and so is our BPO industry. I don’t see any kind of threat from China or the Philippines. But at the same time, we should invest more on talents. There are gaps in finding out the right talent and our job is to fill them. For innovation, we need different kinds of skill sets and also need to upgrade them. For this, we need to work with universities, academics and design the right curriculum. Now, we have specialisation in IT, which was not present 10 years ago.
