Murthy lays thrust on brand building

The work for the Indian IT industry has just begun, said Narayan Murthy, chairman of the board and chief mentor, Infosys Technologies.

Despite the $16 billion in revenues in software and $5 billion in ITeS, India has access to only about 15 per cent of the world software market which is offshore dependent.

"Our work has thus begun," he said. He adds, "As ambitious people, we have even higher targets that is $80 billion by the end of this decade. This means we have to continue with a 35 per cent growth in both sectors during the next six years."

Murthy, who was speaking at NASSCOM 2005, explained that a majority was reactive generalist programmer type companies rather than proactive-specialist kind of companies.

Moreover, he pointed out that the industry depends too much on the top five companies. Of the incremental $3 billion this year, about $2.4 billion will come from the top five companies.

Of the $16 billion in revenues this year, about 60 per cent is expected from top five. This, he states is far from healthy and it is risky.

He said that many more smaller companies will have to participate in this growth since it its smaller companies which can adapt better to market than larger companies. They can also become better niche players.

To become globally competitive, companies must stress on brand building. The investment in building brand equity for the companies, he cited is very low. This, he emphasised has to be stepped up.

Murthy said the industry is predominantly cost arbitragers rather than value players. If the industry has to have sustainable competitiveness, this has to change. Onsite revenue productivity has to reach levels of our global competitors such as Accenture and IBM Global services.

He said, "We have to move from being short-order cooks specialising in reactive programming services to chefs specialising in proactive end-to-end problem solution providers. Only a few top companies are doing it today."

According to him, to become globally competitive, companies have to become multicultural in its employee profile as a true global leverages global talent.

In his concluding remarks he states that the industry is at a critical juncture in the history of the country as "never did the world look up to India to play a critical role as it does today, in advancing the state of the art in the matters of the mind".