Happy Father’s Day to all wonderful dads of the world!

It’s a special feeling.


Thanks to my daughter, Aprita, because of her I got the post of ‘Father’.

Fathers are special, they teach you how to stand up and live with your head above rest of the world. He acts as a friend when you need a suggestion, he acts as coach when you need some guidance, he runs with you so that you don’t fall, he walks with you so you don’t get bored, he sings with you the song of joy, he consoles you when you cry.

That is the world of dad for you!

As a father, it’s a learning experience for me each day, to answer her questions or it might be just a feeling that she might not like it; it may be change in behavior because of the fact that she doesn’t like it. Or it could be as simple as sacrificing my favorite baseball game such that she can enjoy her cartoon. Or trying to teach me to make some drawings or force me to dance like her. It feels great. I feel I have also grown with her as a person, as an individual.

Simply put, I have learnt to see the world through her eyes!

Thanks Arpita, you made me a father, bought me in to a separate world. It’s a wonderful world of dads.

Changing Customer Demands

There are many talks on Euro zone and about the predictability of the business from that geography.


The market dynamics is changing every day and Indian IT companies are responding with new/different business and operational models; which focuses on maximizing the total cost of ownership. Customers would love if some vendor comes and tells them how to reduce the cost and give them predictability and sustainability. Unlike earlier demand, which was driven by offshoring and access to large talent pools, today's customer wants solutions that can improve business.

Ok, now lets understand from a CIO perspective, what do they really need?

Let us consider a case, where customer is a telecom major and CIO wanted to outsource, what he/she will expect from the vendor? To list few important expectations,

• Reduce the cost: This has to be on the main agenda of outsourcing, if not why to change the running model? The reduction in the cost of contact could be achieved through offshoring (to gain cost arbitrage), or it could be because of tools/processes/reusable components or productivity gain because of high skilled labor or domain expertise. Indian IT industry has mastered this art of reducing the total cost of ownership by investing in domain expertise, process and tools and skill building.

• Predictability: In changing economical conditions, most of the CIOs need a predictability of spending, on IT budgets. No one wants to have a flexible cost structure which becomes difficult to manage. IT industry has designed fixed cost models to reduce the cost risk and give more predictability.

• Risk Sharing: Today’s customers want solution, for a telecom customer what means is; they need a vendor who can say, I will take care of your wireless business at this price, I will take care of your fixed line business at this price. Meaning, vendor needs to divide customer’s business in to different value chains and take care of IT systems end-to-end with complete ownership to these value chains. Indian IT industry designed a very good SLA regime which aims at sharing the risk with customers; which puts CIOs in more comfort level to share the contract.

• Sustainability: The biggest challenge of IT projects is initial transition to a new vendor and how the change management is managed by that new vendor. Initial few months is where the business users or customer’s customer will feel the difference and vendors must ensure that this transition goes smooth and there are not many teething issues. A well defined plan and approach takes care of such things.

• Understand business: Most important part; vendors must understand customers business and design the solution based on that domain experience. Customers don’t want to waste time in explaining the business needs all the times. Building the domain competency has been one of the core strengths of Indian vendors and they have learnt the art of talking the same language. In this way, its more on moving up in the value chain and becoming more mature in the services they are providing.

Indian IT industry has reached a maturity where they talk about ‘Transformation Projects’ where a business of a customer is transformed by changing the business processes and integrated stake holders. This is a more matured move ahead of being system integrators of the IT systems.

Industry has come a long way now..

World Chess Championship and Vishwanathan Anand

Congratulations to Vishwanathan Anand, for regaining the world chess championship; this was a great show and he made every Indian feel proud.

In the process of becoming world class player; what he has done is building a strong support crew. A group of seconds, computer analysts and logistic organizers.

The key to all this has been reinventing himself. In a position, Anand is known for his uncanny ability to sense key changes that suddenly offer chances for the lightning attacks that he is known for. He has a superb intuition for the ebb and tide of the game, the inner flow in a position. Vladimir Kramnik, Russian grandmaster, has said, "Each champion has had some sort of speciality, and his is creating counterplay in any position out of absolutely nowhere.

He's got an amazing ability to constantly stretch himself so that even in some kind of Exchange Slav he nevertheless manages to attack something and create something."

Congratulations..

Battle of Mid-Sized IT companies

At a time when the big guns of Indian IT are tempering their business outlook, four companies from the midtier set are demonstrating performance and projecting confidence of the kind usually associated with an Infosys, TCS, Wipro or Cognizant. In a drifting stock market over the past year, when the benchmark BSE Sensex has dropped 8%, Infosys 17% and Wipro 14%, these four companies have delivered returns of between 20% and 87%.

Those stellar short-term returns delivered by Hexaware, MindTree, NIIT Technologies andZensar are backed by business performance, which, in turn, is being steadily shaped by a fundamental change in thinking. In varying degrees, these companies and some of their other peers, are morphing from being generalists to specialists.

It's a battle of intellectual capital now, not about labour arbitrage advantage to customer.

Generally  the large peers are beating these mid-sized companies when comes to pricing, as larger players seems to benefit from the operating efficiency and size. And more ever when comes to larger deals in generalist area, these mid-sized companies are not even invited for the bidding process.

Mid-tier IT companies-those with annual revenues of Rs 500-2,000 crore-have spent much of their existence aping the large players by offering a similar suite of low-end software services built on the foundation of labour arbitrage. But, with speedy growth and plum profitability eluding them, they are increasingly going from doing less in more areas to doing more in fewer areas.

In the process, such companies are changing the contours of the debate on whether the perennially underperforming mid-cap set can create a comfortable identity of its own, or whether it is resigned to remain trapped in its choices and drift along. They are going deeper in their chosen verticals, and building capabilities where revenue growth is not linked to adding employees. For instance,  MindTree has built capabilities in Bluetooth technology- short-range wireless that helps mobile phones interact with wireless ear-plugs. MindTree counts itself among the top five suppliers of this technology globally and has done 32 licensing deals.

Elsewhere, NIIT Technologies is offering software solutions for cargo handling and airline systems at airports. Its clients include the airports at Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Hexaware, in 2008, re-organised its business along two major industry verticals, each managed as a standalone business: banking and financial services, and travel and transportation.

Much as specialisation gives traction and a unique positioning with clients, it can also be a barrier. It is an asset when the chosen area is doing well, but a liability in bad times. Specialisation also means a company is defining its playing field narrowly. "The more you specialise, the more you constrain your ability to scale.

In general, mid sized companies have lot of operating challenges, a below picture describes them. In such a challenging environment, its important to build a constant revenue stream and ability to build the business. This step of focusing on niche market and being specialized in some verticals and do well in them is what seems to be working, considering the market results.