Source: Economic Times

Xerox, the $15.9-billion document management firm’s division, Xerox’s Global Services (XGS) is gearing up for an expansion overdrive in India, by improving its focus on its services business in the sub-continent, even while it hopes to double its XGS workforce in India.

“We are looking to increase the firm’s headcount from the existing team of 600-people to nearly 1,200 by 2010,” says Ravi Venkatraman, Director - Xerox Global Services, confirming his firm’s strategy, while stating that XGS hopes to double its headcount, simultaneously doubling client acquisitions, including doubling revenues by 2010. At present, XGS has nearly 70-clients in India, which accounts for nearly one-third of Xerox’s global revenue from its services business in India.

Further, Mr. Venkataraman affirms XGS will build specialist teams for focusing on a variety of verticals in India, such as, cashing in on the ITeS, education and telecom sectors, adding: “Take the case for the telecom space. According to TRAI estimates, there are 214-million subscribers in India, which means that the documentation required by the service provider firms is immense. They have the customer application forms, address verification database to look after. The physical database for telecom firms is increasingly becoming a problem for operators. This presents a huge opportunity for XGS to step in and offer to manage the entire document consumption by these firms.” Already, providing Airtel with such services, XGS according to Venkataraman plans to come out with a complete packaged content management software, aimed specifically at education institutions in India. “With this offering, we would look to store all the departmental information in e-form, meaning less dependence on paper,” he claims.

Geographically, the firm’s focus will be mainly big metros, such as, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, in addition to Tier II cities, such as, Hyderabad and Pune, and has identified six Indian cities, it will scout for client acquisitions. With global clients, such as, Nokia, HSBC, CitiGlobal, XGS has aggressive plans to capture the Indian market, with Karnataka High court already implementing parts of its document management services solution, earlier this year. “We are also targeting the judiciary and healthcare segments besides ITeS and telecom,” states Venkataraman.

Expounding on document outsourcing opportunities in India, he claims Indian corporates translate into 4.7-trillion documents to manage in the document outsourcing space. “We are looking at gaining a market share in a market that is already valued at $36.6-million,” says he. “Moreover, documents tend to consume as much as 50% of the IT budgets within Indian firms and this represented an enormous opportunity for XGS in India.” Apart from XGS, there are other players in the market, such as, Canon and Hewlett Packard (HP), who both outsource printing requirements, and could therefore become potential clients.

According to IDC, a research firm maintains, global executives on an average, spend 45% of their time working with documents, while 90% of the firms do not know how much is spent on document production and maintenance each year. Further, IDC states the volume of document output in offices across the globe are increasing by, as much as, 21% per annum, due to changes ushered in by new technologies, such as, ERP systems, the Internet, Intranets and others.

As the Indian Rupee appreciates against the dollar, and Indian BPO / ITeS/ KPO firms suffer from high attrition, with research Pundits predicting that India will face a talent crunch, thereby unable to retain its position as a global outsourcing hub, reality paints a different picture as, despite rumours and research studies, the corporate and financial world remains bullish on India! Ground reality and experience tells them that India is capable of overcoming the odds and meeting the challenges thrown up in its face!

Already, the likes of IT majors Infosys, TCS, Wipro, apart from setting up overseas centres, have also set up finishing schools on their respective campuses to fine hone the skills of the young graduates they recruit. As new outsourcing frontiers open up, Indian firms are in there first, raring for first go!

Source: Economic Times

As India’s R&D sector begins to shine, it brings to mind lyrics of a Rolling Stones song that goes something like this: ‘May the good Lord shine a light on you, Warm like the evening sun!’ And, that exactly is what is happening to India, as global firms hone in on it, making the sub-continent their R&D hub, as Indian researchers innovate, coming into their own, aglow from the warmth of the evening sun!

Case in point, Adobe System, the US-based desktop publishing major, whose Indian R&D centre has come out with two new products for the global market. Recently, Adobe India, its Indian subsidiary, released FrameMaker 8.0, a publishing tool and Captivate 3.0, e-learning software, both of which were developed and designed entirely out of its Indian labs.

“Two teams of about 30 and 65-people worked on FrameMaker and Captivate simultaneously, for several months to roll out the products. FrameMaker 8.0 will be priced at $899 (for a new licence) and $229 for an upgrade. On the other hand, Captivate 3.0 will be priced at $699 (new licence) and $299 for an upgrade,” states Naresh Gupta, Managing Director – Adobe India.

In common use in various industries, like IT, aviation, telecom, banking, etc., FrameMaker is used for technical documentation purposes, and it has about half a million dedicated users, with Boeing, Apple and Cadence being the major patrons of FrameMaker. “In fact, the Apple i-phone’s manual was designed using FrameMaker,” says Mr. Gupta.

It’s time for that someone viciously dreamt up the term cyber coolies, at a time Indian techies had begun to take the outsourcing world by storm, to eat humble pie. From cyber coolies to cutting edge research and development, India’s outsourcing sector has come a long way!

And, so shrugging off the complex, centuries of western domination has instilled in Asian minds, Indians no longer are afraid of being laughed at, as they draw on their country’s ancient knowledge to solve the problems of the world! One only has to decipher ancient Indian manuscripts to find, our knowledge is not half as much of what the ancients knew! While, we pride ourselves on our cutting edge technology, we are no where near achieving technology used in the Mahabharata war, in what was the world’s First World War.

Even Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, found inspiration from the Bhagvada Gita, going so far as to quote from it, when describing the effect of the bomb: “If, the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One…”

However, my vision and hope is Indians will refrain from research and development, whose outcome is horrific inventions, such as, the atom bomb. Rather, I hope what comes out of India’s R& D labs makes life better for their global family. And, so on that note, let’s end with the Robbie Robertson’s ‘Shine Your Light”.