It was with the dawning of the Y2K problem that the West woke up to the potential of Indian IT. In itself, the Y2K crunch did not involve much of a complexity; it was something that had to be completed within a certain time period. Every corporation needed it badly. At the time, there were perhaps 100-125 Fortune 500 companies working with Indian service providers; the Y2K made almost all 500 of them embrace the Indian service providers.

In that lay Indian IT industry’s biggest turning point. The mass influx of global clients’ services to Indian companies created the basic foundation in raising the awareness of the commitment, hard work, and the smartness of the Indian IT force in global business circles. At around the same time, the internet revolution made way for many more jobs to move to India; work in that sphere was very high-tech and advanced. It enhanced the technological caliber of the Indian IT executives and provided them exposure to complex problems.

We have since leveraged this situation quite successfully; with Y2K providing us the channel to global MNCs, we started using our expertise in high-tech areas and advanced applications to cross-sell other services to them, and became their long-term partner. That has been the primary contributor in helping us reach where we are today.

Looking ahead
I envision the per capita revenue productivity of the Indian IT professionals to quadruple; from $50,000 per year now to about $200,000. But that will only come about when we move up the value chain and work on more and more of end-to-end solutions for our clients. It is necessary to bring in new ideas and develop new models improve productivity and reduce costs, while remaining focused on the business.