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the-south-asian.com July / August 2006 |
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August/September Contents
Sufis - wisdom against 50
years of mountain Heritage cities:
Cotton - the fibre of
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Page
3 of 10 Telecom & Software - Trends & Future in South Asia
(cntd.) by
Salman Minhas First
published in December 2001
Reaping the Telecom & Software Harvest
- The Value/Wealth Creators from India
Graduate of I IT, Kanpur;
IIM , Ahmedabad [equivalent to Caltech & Harvard of USA].
Value/Wealth created in
1999 $ 6- 30 billion company.
Later on after a stint at a Bombay software consultancy Murthy and about 6
other colleagues started up Infosys Technologies with a seed capital of only
10,0000 Rupees [ $ 500 ] . For 10 years they struggled with working for
clients and sending staff to the western countries .
In
1991 the Indian Government liberalised the economy and removed the red tape;
they also created the Software Technology Park in Bangalore, offering 15
year tax holidays and providing the high speed telecom infrastructure.
Infosys ran with this opportunity to provide customers like Nordstorm,
Nortel, Aetna 24 hours , 7 days a week software design & customization
services.
Today Infosys has provided stock options to everyone of its 6,500 staff in
the company. A waiter in the company Head Quarters in Bangalore's 50-hectare
campus is worth half a million dollars.
As
a result the turn-over in Infosys is about 9 % in 2000 against the average
of 22 % in the world software industry.
As
a company, it is known for its transparent accounting practices which means
declaring losses as it did in 1995.
Murthy lives in the same modest apartment he got 20 years ago, flies
economy class and dresses modestly. He is also the first to volunteer to pay
taxes as a software company making big profits . Infosys donates about 1.5 %
of its net profits to the Infosys Foundation making schools , libraries,
hospitals for India's poor. Murthy is also a cousin to Deshpande who
founded Cascade Communications , which was bought by Ascend Communications.
Deshpande later started Sycamore Networks and is a billionaire in America.
Murthy’s vision:
In
his May , 2000 address to the Asia Society of Hong Kong, he identified the
following . His vision was to make India the country of choice for the customised software development and maintenance. He also believes that this is where the opportunity lies in the coming years. As long as Companies differentiate themselves in the market place by following a unique strategy, this will require a layer of Customization around even standard packing. The value proposition of the Indian software industry is “ faster, better, and cheaper”.
Challenges
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