IT firms keen to tap local colleges

West Bengal was now on the radar of overseas technology and consulting firms that were keen to partner with educational insitututes and local IT firms here.

G J Huang, fellow of the Institute for Information Technology of Taiwan was in town for the CII ICT East 2008, looking for opportunities in the semi-conductor and hardware manufacturing sector in the state.

While more than 99 per cent of all computer motherboards across the world were built by Taiwanese companies, these were hardly based out of Taiwan, Huang said.

"China housed a large section of these companies. And inspired by the recent opportunities in the semi-conductors segment Eastern India, we can look forward to future collaborations.", he added.

Huang was in town to survey the market potential for interested Taiwanese companies who wanted to set up operations here.

UK based Assessment Tommorrow(AT), a consulting firm in the skills assessment business, had opened a liaison office in Kolkata. It was currently focusing on tying up with universities and educational institutions in West Bengal for business.

The firm was upbeat upon the response from the state education department and was already working with the Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU) and the West Bengal University of Technology (WBUT) here. It had technology partners in the UK that would conduct e-assessments for hard and soft-skills for both corporates and varsities.

AT looked at working with at least half a dozen organisations by next year. We are working in geographies like Malaysia and Hong Kong, but as of now India was the fastest growing market for us, said Jeff Ross, director, AT.

Bertrand E Reiter, German country coordinator for Free Software Foundation, Europe(FSFE) was keen to partner with small and medium enterprises(SMEs) in India. India could be a big buyer for free software, he said.

And as cost cutting was one of the main objectives behind free software, Indian engineers from local IT firms could offer a host of low-cost value additions to already developed software, Reiter added.

Around 36 per cent of all software developed in Europe was free software. Reiter was scheduled to meet the authorities at BESU during his stay in the city to discuss opportunities for a symbiotic collaboration between FSFE and the institute.

While the students at BESU could contribute to development of free software, it also gave them the opportunity to sell the value-added product apart from a hands-on experience.