Source: profit.ndtv.com

The US elections are nearing D-day and the biggest question on everybody’s mind is will it or won’t it affect the business of outsourcing.

Earlier Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made headlines when he said that the US companies shipping jobs outside the United States must be taxed.

Obama had evidently sent a worry wave through India Inc, but now his advisor, Nelson W Cunningham, is now trying to underplay the presidential candidate’s earlier remarks, clearly putting the onus on business houses to take that final, ‘sensitive’ call.

“Outsourcing is inevitable. Jobs will go where they will be handled most efficiently. We cannot put up walls and barriers against that,” said Cunningham.

India’s software and services exports stood at nearly $40 billion during financial year 2008, with the US as its largest market. While skeptics may discount the Indo-US future trade earnings, some experts believe that the two countries are like Siamese twins, who have to engage with each other.

C K Prahalad, Paul and McCracken Professor at Ross School of Business, said,“ I think India has tremendous opportunity to become the innovation partner for the US companies. I feel it will strengthen the relationship a lot better and it’s also difficult for either India Inc or the US companies to disengage from each other.”

Meanwhile, Ron Somers, President of US-India Business Council (USIBC) said that the present condition was a dark moment in the US economy, but markets like India will pull US forward.
“India will be an anchor for the US and the slowdown will be beneficial for the Indo-US business ties,” Somers said.

If we were to believe the optimists, then it would certainly not be difficult to achieve the $50 billion target for bilateral trade between the world’s largest economic power and the largest democracy.

Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com

CHENNAI: Scope International, the 100 per cent subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, UK on Thursday said it is planning to set up another Call Centre/Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) facility in the city.

“We are planning to set up another Call Centre facility here, in addition to the existing one in the city. We are scouting for locations” Scope International, Chief Executive Officer, Mr Edwin Nevis told PTI, but declined to elaborate.

“We are evaluating whether to buy a property for the call centre or purchase it on lease due to market conditions”, he said.

However, the new company may also come up at any of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) situated on the outskirts of the city, he said.

He said the facility would have a seating capacity of 600 to 700 people.

“We are hoping to commence operations by first or second quarter of next year”, he said.

Nevis was here on the occasion of signing a MoU with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, (IIT-M) for offering a course on financial markets for MBA students.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: Waste it. That’s what e-waste management companies are urging people to do. As long as consumers discard electronic waste, this is one sector that will not face the heat of the economic slowdown, believe experts.

Consider the figures — there are 58 million television units in India currently that will reach 234 million by 2015. By the end of 2010 there will be around 75 million computers in India from 15 million now since the life cycle of a PC has come down to 3-4 years from 7-8 years a few years back, and the segment is suffering from an extremely high obsolescence rate of 30% per year.

Similarly, the Indian mobile handset market is set to zoom across the 100 million mark soon. E-waste management firms claim that now it is possible to recycle around 98% of a cellphone. At the same time, memory devices, MP3 players and iPods are the new additions to e-waste production. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Nitin Gupta, CEO of Attero Recycling, a Noida-based start up in the business of e-waste management that recently attracted $6.3 million in funding from venture capital firms NEA-IndoUS Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, says, “We are looking at the possibility of India becoming the outsourcing hub for e-waste management. It has a huge potential, as the electronics industry is growing very fast across the globe and people have started addressing the issue of properly recycling e-waste.” And it is time that they did. Globally, electronics is the largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry, having surpassed one trillion US dollars. And e-waste management firms such as, Attero have a lot to look forward to, since it takes only $2 to recycle a single PC in India compared to $20 in US.

At present, there are almost two million old PCs ready for disposal in India, according to industry estimates. And preliminary data suggests that the total Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) generation in India is approximately a mammoth 146000 tonnes per year. M K Soni, CMD of Infotreck Syscom, a Mumbai-based e-waste management and recycling company, feels that India certainly has the potential.

Mr Soni says, “There is a huge margin for Indian companies to fill the gap between the number of existing firms and the number of companies needed to recycle the amount of e-waste produced globally. This is one sector that will not face the heat of economic slowdown. Even if there is a global meltdown, people still need to communicate and that means business for companies like us.” The main source for e-waste remains imports, government, public and private sector discards, PC retailers, manufacturers, secondary market of old PCs and individual households. Around 30,000 computers become obsolete every year from the IT industry in Bangalore alone.

Three categories of WEEE account for almost 90% of the generation: large household appliances: 42.1%, information and communications: 33.9% and consumer electronics: 13.7%. Developed nations dump an estimated 500 million tonnes of e-waste yearly in emerging countries. Of this almost 70% of the waste ends up in China, making it the world’s largest dumping ground for e-waste. In India, e- waste is mainly collected by recyclers abroad and sold to waste traders from India. Then it lands in ports like Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Kandla and passes through customs as second hand, mixed metal scrap, for charity/donations to end up in recycling units in Delhi and Mumbai, Chennai amongst others.

But for e-waste management companies here, the main problem lies with procuring a license to import e-waste. Till date no license has been issued to any firm. “There are three stages involved in procuring a license. One has to get a clearance from Ministry of Environment and Forests, get a no objection certificate from the state pollution board and then get a certificate from the Central Pollution Control Board. So far in India, there is no integrated system in place and companies are involved in mechanical disintegration,” says Mr Gupta.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

MUMBAI: In a major domestic outsourcing deal, Godrej Industries and Godrej Consumer Products have signed a 10-year outsourcing contract with Hewlett Packard(HP). The value of the contract was not disclosed, but would include application development and maintenance, infrastructure management and transformational initiatives. As part of the agreement between the firms, HP will also take over the staff working in the IT operations of the two companies.

Since the first such outsourcing deal between Bharti and IBM, a number of similar deals have been announced by Indian business groups. In February this year, the Future group had signed a similar outsourcing deal for $150 million with Wipro, in which about 265 employees of Pantaloon Retail had moved to the IT firm. In this case, the IT management staff will be retained by Godrej, while the IT operations staff will move to Hewlett Packard.

These contracts help domestic firms to cut IT costs and bring in greater efficiencies. For multinationals, this represents a new and growing business opportunity when most of them are facing growth pressures in their home markets. The Godrej group had appointed Ernst & Young to help them identify the most suitable IT partner.

The Godrej win is significant for HP because it is in segment outside of financial services, which has traditionally been its strongest segment. Sometime back, it had also won a transformation engagement from Britannia.

Source: www.siliconindia.com

New Delhi: At a time when many companies go for downsizing their workforce due to the financial crisis, the U.S.-based IT services provider Computer Science (CSC) Wednesday said it will add 2,000 people to its India tally in next six months.

“In the next six months, we will add another 2,000 employees in India,” CSC (India) president Rajendra B. Vattikuti told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here.

In the next three years, we will recruit at the industry average, he added.

This addition of 2,000 employees would take the company’s total workforce in India to 21,000. CSC has a total workforce of 90,000 as on July, 2008.

“The company has been immune to the global meltdown and rather it has offered more opportunities for the company to expand,” CSC chief executive officer and chairman Michel W. Laphen said.

He said India had contributed around $1 billion to CSC’s overall revenue last fiscal.The company’s total revenue for the year ending July 4, 2008 was $17.1 billion.

Asked about the economic crisis, he said the global outsourcing pipeline still remained strong despite the international financial turmoil.

“We are not seeing any projects cancelled yet, but companies are adopting a sort of wait-and-see position,” Laphen added.