IBM has been steadily reducing its US employee numbers and has simultaneously increased sharply its Indian ones. (AP photo)
BANGALORE: It's a measure of India's strength in software services and the number of engineers it produces that some of the world's largest IT companies have more employees in India now than in their home countries.
And increasingly, these foreign companies are shifting their consulting base to India, thanks to the talent coming out of the country's business schools.
IBM, the biggest in the business, has been steadily reducing its US employee numbers and has simultaneously increased sharply its Indian ones. The company does not officially break up its employee numbers by geography, but theIBM employee organization Alliance@IBM puts the US figure for 2012 at 91,000, down from 127,000 in 2006. The last time IBM provided figures for India was in 2007, when it said it had 73,000 employees here. Since then, all estimates suggest that the company has added another 50,000 to 60,000 employees, taking the total count to about 1.3 lakh.
That puts the India number at more than 40% of the US figure. It also means — given IBM's global headcount of 4.3 lakh — that one in almost every three IBM employee is in India.
One-third of global IT workforce is in India
Around one-third of the global workforce employed in top IT companies is based in India — a sign of the fact that our country is virtually turning into the global IT headquarters.
Sample this: Accenture's strength in India, at over 90,000, is more than double that in the US (its traditional home), at about 43,000. The company has a total strength of 2.75 lakh, which means India accounts for a third of its workforce. French IT major Capgemini has over 44,000 of its 1.25 lakh employees in India; its staff strength in India grew by 50% in just the past two-and-a-half years. It has just 20,000 staffers in its home country, France. Computer Sciences Corporation(CSC) has 24,000 of its 98,000 employees in India. Though TOI could not obtain its US strength, that in India would be at least its second largest operation.
"No other place can scale up as India can," says Aruna Jayanthi, CEO of Capgemini India, a company that makes no bones about its overwhelming dependence on the country. India produces some 5 lakh engineers a year, and even though many of them are said to be unemployable straight off campuses, numbers that are employable are significant. Most of them are sufficiently comfortable in English, and given India's more than two-decade experience with software, engineers graduate with a certain comfort with the space.
"We have no problem getting talent. There is a surplus at the entry level and salaries at this level have stabilized. So for the foreseeable future, India will be our key centre of delivery. In fact, all our freshers from around the world come here for 6-8 weeks of training," says Jayanthi.
Siddharth Pai, partner and president in outsourcing advisory firm ISG Asia Pacific, says the East and West are demographically different, with sizable ageing populations in the West. "This and the demand for specialized skills that's available in plenty here compared to that in other countries have made India play the global delivery game. Companies competing for specialized skills will ramp up their headcount in India. Leadership skills will also come out of here and India will find its place in the global leadership league," he says.
Sundararaman Vishwanathan of IT consulting firm Zinnov notes that while American companies have been adept at putting India at the centre of their global delivery strategy, some European and Japanese companies have been behind in the India-adoption curve and are now taking the acquisition route to acquire service capabilities here. Japan's NTT Data, one of the world's biggest IT services companies, acquired Intelligroup, an IT company with a significant India presence, two years ago, and bought Indian datacentre services provider Netmagic last year.
Most of the IT services companies are also now building strong consulting strengths in India — consultants that are used not just for India, but also for global engagements. Capgemini India started establishing this business two years ago and already has 200 consultants, a number that has doubled in the past year. Jayanthi says India's top business schools produce very good quality talent for consulting. "We train them by sending them to different countries. India also does 80-90% of the research and ground work for consulting engagements," she says.
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