The Mumbai-based company is targeting to enrol at least 10 lakh customers every quarter from now on, such that no village or family would remain financially excluded, eventually. FINO’s biometric smart card has ushered in ‘the next big revolution’ in the rural banking and finance sector, says its Chief Financial Officer and President, Mr Rishi Gupta.

In an interview over phone to Business Line, Mr Gupta said the company was working with the Andhra Pradesh Government in five different districts. “The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees employment for the unemployed in the rural areas for 100 days in a year through works such as building roads, improving water supply and works that are necessary to improve the infrastructure in rural areas.

“Before we came into the picture, the payment of wages to these workers was either through banks or post office accounts and the disbursements invariably would take at least two weeks. We have resolved this by collecting the job card details from the Gram Panchayat or Mandal and issuing the biometric smart card to the persons enrolled under the NREGA scheme.

“Once the Gram Panchayat furnishes the wage-due details, it is uploaded on to the machine. Besides shortening the waiting time by a week, the smart card enables the card holder to withdraw cash by swiping the card and without waiting in long queues at the bank or post office counters,” he explained.

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Total income over the first quarter came in at 3.570 billion euros, up from 2.924 billion year-on-year.

EBITDA rose to 1.231 billion euros from 1.189 billion in the same period a year ago.

Analysts had pegged sales in the range 3.447 billion euros to 3.637 billion, and EBITDA in the range 1.222 billion euros to 1.257 billion.

Net profit amounted to 334 million euros, from 313 million in the same period a year earlier, with earnings per share of 0.19 euros from 0.16 euros.

Analysts saw net profit of 354 million euros to 405 million.

The company said the integration of its ICT services and corporate solutions units with Getronics was on track and will be completed by January 1, 2009.

Sales at Getronics were 515 million euros over the period. Rabo Securities saw sales of 510 million euros.

At the company’s German mobile operator E-Plus, sales came in at 755 million euros, ahead of Rabo’s forecast 702 million euros.

The Dutch telecom company maintained its previous guidance of full-year capex of around 2 billion euros, with free cash flow of at least 2.4 billion euros.

At the company’s operations in the Netherlands, revenues were 2.594 billion euros, up from 2.062 billion. The company said 980 million euros of this came from its consumer operations, while 795 million euros were generated from business operations.

The company said its previously announced 1 billion euros share buy back still has 700 million euros outstanding, and will begin again from April 29.

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Consolidated revenues from operations for the first quarter rose to Rs 79.88 crore (Rs 59.36 crore).

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The tender offer, announced on June 11, 2007 was finalised after IBM obtained acceptance from 98.7 per cent of stock ownership in Telelogic as well as satisfaction of other conditions of the offer, including necessary worldwide regulatory approvals, an IMB release said.

According to Ken King, Vice-President and Telelogic Integration Executive, IBM software company, “with the acquisition closure, Telelogic now becomes an `IBM’ company’.

“The integrated product and technology road map will illustrate incremental value to our systesm IT customers across Telelogic and Rational. India has a unique advantage with this acquisition as we gain not just from the business perspective also from the strong skill-set that Telelogic has here”, he said.

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Eventually, it turned out to be a case of a storm in a tea cup. A Wipro official confirmed that PR Chandrasekar, president, Americas and Europe, had resigned, but no other executives had quit “An internal announcement about his resignation was made on Monday,” the official said in response to a query by ET.

Mr Chandrasekar has spent close to eight years in Wipro, having joined the firm from General Electric, where he was director, business development, for India. The other well-known name to have joined Wipro from GE and then quit was Vivek Paul. Mr Paul was head of GE’s global CT scanner business when Wipro picked him up.

During the day, however, a leading business television channel reported market talk that four key executives of Wipro were quitting, which in turn fuelled speculation about many more senior officials, including the head of Wipro BPO, TK Kurien, and Sudip Nandy, who heads the telecom business under the new structure.

The main reason cited for the supposed resignations was the unhappiness over the recent changes in the management hierarchy. Two weeks ago, Wipro announced a realignment of its management structure, under which Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani were appointed as joint CEOs, with Mr Vaswani heading the infotech, BPO and enterprise division and Mr Paranjpe heading the telecom and BFSI businesses.

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Quick quiz: Which company is more “American”—Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services, or Armonk (N.Y.)-based IBM (IBM)? Evaluate the two based on where they make their sales, and the answer is surprising. TCS, India’s largest tech-services company, collected 51% of its revenues in North America last quarter, while 65% of IBM’s were overseas.

This juxtaposition helps explain investor reaction to the companies’ most recent earnings reports. TCS stock declined by more than 10% on Apr. 21 after it reported that earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter fell short of expectations. IBM, by contrast, beat estimates on Apr. 16. Its stock is up 3% since then and 25% since mid-February.

“No Slackening of Demand”
A tale of two strategies is playing out amid shifting global economic conditions. TCS, like the other top Indian tech-services outfits, has long focused on big American and British corporations. Now that the U.S. is slipping into a recession, the Indian companies are vulnerable. TCS, though, insists its financial shortfall doesn’t signal a fundamental weakness. It says a handful of U.S. clients canceled expansion plans in the fourth quarter, and the company agreed to defer payments by two big customers. “There’s no slackening of demand,” says N. Chandrasekaran, the company’s chief operating officer. “The pipeline is good. We just had some specific situations.”

IBM’s strong results stem from a strategy of diversifying into emerging markets by its services business, which represents about half of overall revenues. Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge says IBM has a two-track approach: In the U.S., where clients are economizing, it helps them cut costs, while in emerging markets, it helps customers build out their technology infrastructure.

In India, where IBM is now the No. 1 seller of technology services, its revenues grew 41% last quarter.”Our success starts with how global we are, which is intentional,” says Virginia M. Rometty, who runs global business services for IBM.

IBM and Accenture: Setting the Bar?
TCS is the most geographically diversified of the top Indian tech-?services companies. Others rely on the U.S. for 60% to 70% of sales, and all are scrambling to broaden their business. TCS, which last year set up a unit targeting emerging markets, saw revenues increase 40% there in the past fiscal year. Infosys Technologies (INFY), India’s No. 2 services player, on Apr. 15 warned that it might face a slowdown in demand. It, too, has launched an initiative aimed at China, India, Latin America, and the Middle East. Kris Gopalakrishnan, the company’s chief executive, cautions that Infosys is playing catch-up with the likes of IBM and Accenture (ACN). “It will take three years to make a significant difference to our revenues,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Indian companies aren’t in a terrible spot; after all, their services are designed to help clients simplify their businesses and save money. Until the U.S. economy pulls out of the doldrums, though, they will have to sell more aggressively and plan carefully so they don’t end up with too many employees, which would pinch margins.

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The GSC would service local and international customers, according to director and vice president for Asia Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa, Virender Aggarwal.

“Our Malaysian operations will be focusing on large companies and banks,” he told StarBiz via a conference call from Singapore to Hyderabad last week

Virender did not disclose the potential customers Satyam was targeting.

Launched last September, the GSC currently employs about 500 staff, mostly Malaysians.

Virender said Satyam would continue to recruit more local talents for its GSC.

“We have about 350 Malaysian engineers now and recruiting will continue into next year,” he said.

Virender oversees Satyam’s operations in the part of the region classified as “Rest of the World” (ROW), which includes Asia Pacific.

ROW contributes almost 20% to Satyam’s overall revenue. Just over 60% and 20% come from its US and European operations respectively.

According to Virender, Satyam’s Malaysian operations currently account for about 2% of ROW’s contribution.

“Contribution from Malaysia is relatively small. But to us Malaysia is a place to get work done and not necessarily a place to make a big amount of money,” he said.

The GSC serves Satyam’s Asean, Middle Eastern and American customers.

“We are also looking at doing more business processing outsourcing work because our Malaysian operations are involved in mainly IT work now,” Virender said.

He also said Malaysia had good economic growth and was cost effective to conduct business compared with the neighbouring countries.

“We are definitely looking to push more work into Malaysia,” Virender said.

Satyam, meanwhile, hit a milestone when it recorded revenue of US$2.13bil for the financial year ended March 31. Its revenue grew 46.3% while net profit surged 39.7% to US$417mil compared with US$298mil previously.

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Inaugurating a one-day workshop organised jointly by the Electronics Industries Association of India (ELCINA) and the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) here, he said that the State Government was planning to extend all the concessions available to the IT industry to the electronics hardware industry as well, such as special power tariffs, exemption from stamp duty and registration fees for all units established in IT hardware parks.

IT hardware units established in Kerala will also be entitled to a 10 per cent price preference in IT hardware procured by the Kerala Government, government bodies and other PSUs, he told the 100-odd participants from the industry at the workshop.

The workshop was meant to provide more information to the participants about the State as one of the best emerging destinations for electronics industry in India.

Growth potential

“The Indian market for electronics is expected to grow to $320 billion by 2015 and there is a potential for the Indian domestic hardware manufacturing industry also to grow to $155 billion in 2015,” Mr Jainder Singh, Secretary IT, Government of India, said.

He pointed out that electronics manufacturing has the potential to generate employment for even low skilled people left out of the opportunities in software development. The Government of India has over the last few years has taken a number of measures to promote the growth electronics/IT hardware manufacturing industry. As a result, the hardware manufacturing industry in India is at a take-off stage.

He also explained the new policy of the Government for establishing IT Investment Regions. IT Investment Regions could contain SEZ within them. Both the State and Centre will provide necessary infrastructure in the areas where they have basic responsibilities.

Mr Jainder Sigh said that as a result of the Government of India decision to provide investment subsidy of 20-25 per cent to IT hardware units, the Government has secured investment proposals totaling Rs 62,000 crore.

While hailing the support extended by the government, the availability of skilled manpower and conducive environment prevailing in the State, the industry participants suggested that the government should also help in setting up some technology business incubators, extend VAT concessions for the electronics industry, make available more trained personnel from ITIs, create physical infrastructure and exclusive industrial parks.

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The global IT consulting and services provider has sought 25 acres from the state government. Likely to be commissioned within two years, the ODC would generate employment for over 3,000 professionals in the state over a period of five years.

“We have applied for a 25-acre land in Gandhinagar and are likely to receive an approval from the government soon Initially, We plan to invest over Rs 60 crore for the project and later raise the corpus according to requirements,” said Captain H R Prasad, global head (corporate services) for Satyam Computers Limited.

Apart from providing customised IT solutions, consulting and designing for existing clients from the ODC at Gandhinagar, the company is also looking to expand its clientele.

Through its Satyam development centres in countries like India, US, UK, Canada, Japan and Australia, the company serves over 654 global companies.

In the near future, the company is also looking to expand its service base, added Prasad.

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“We are looking at India headcount to be about 50,000 in a year,” Accenture Chairman & CEO William D Green said in Mumbai.

Globally, the company plans to make 60,000 gross additions to its workforce by August been consistently investing in training manpower.

“We had spent USD 780 million globally to train people and are not facing talent woes…we are a big human capital company and all we need is good raw material,” Green said.

On India business he said, Accenture aspires to build a good consulting business here and sees opportunities in financial services and government businesses.

The company operates 45 delivery centres across five continents with more than 75,000 people. Its India delivery centres are located in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Gurgaon in National Capital Region of Delhi.

It is currently servicing 350 clients, including many of the Fortune 100 Companies from India.

Green said that outsourcing will continue to follow the natural course of reaching to sources of expertise. He underlined areas of merger integration, supply chain, human performance and operating models where Accenture holds a competitive edge for India business.

It may be noted that the senior management of Accenture is in India for the first time to hold a board meeting in Mumbai.

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Accenture, which has a headcount of about 37,000 in India at present, intends to scale up this figure to 50,000 in the next 12 months, Mr William D. Green, Chairman and CEO, said.

Worldwide, its gross addition is expected to be 60,000 by the year ended August 31, 2008.

Strategic market

“India is a strategic market for Accenture both for its access to talent and the business opportunities here,” he told presspersons here on Tuesday.

Mr Green is on a visit to India, along with other board members of Accenture, to hold its first regular board meeting in the country.

Accenture serves more than 350 global clients, including Fortune 1000 global clients through its operations in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune. India is also an integral part of Accenture’s Global Delivery Network, a network of more than 45 integrated delivery centres across five continents.

No talent crunch

Replying to a question, Mr Green said the company was not facing a crunch in availability of talent in India. “We spend about $780 million in training worldwide and a significant part of it is invested in India. We are a good human capital company and all we need is good raw material,” he said.

Accenture is especially bullish on the retail and telecom sectors in India. He expected India to lead in Accenture’s global innovation initiative.

NO order CANCELLATIONS

Replying to a question, Mr Green said Accenture did not face any cancellation or deferrals of orders as an upshot of the US sub-prime crisis. “As we have diversified offerings, we have not been affected by what had happened in the US financial markets. What we offer to companies today is different from what we had offered one year ago. In other words, we change our offerings to generate our own domain (during such crisis times),” he pointed out.

Stating that the sub-prime issue had nothing to do with the system, he said the “key thing now is that they (companies stung by it) are determined to get out of it and put all that behind them. It is going to pay off, as the global economy is still strong.”

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This is designed to develop and nurture leaders from Accenture’s mid-level management in India. The Centre for Executive Education and the Centre for IT and Networked Economies at ISB have partnered with Accenture to develop the curriculum for the Academy.

The Academy will offer 18 to 24-month programmes for the first three levels of Accenture middle management in India — team lead, associate manager and manager. Employees who complete the programme will be awarded a certificate for excellence in delivery management.

Accenture invested $776 million in training during last fiscal ended August 31, 2007

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A strong rupee has, however, resulted in a marginal revenue growth of about 6 per cent in rupee terms and a less than one per cent growth in net profit.

Deals for the quarter were billed at Rs 39.83 a dollar, Rs 4.92 less than that the billing rate in the same quarter in the previous year

Mr R. Srikanth, Executive Vice-President & Chief Financial Officer, Polaris, attributed the growth in the current quarter to the company’s focus on profitability as in dollar terms net profit had grown by 12 per cent. Polaris bagged 14 new deals in the quarter including a master services agreement with a Fortune 10 bank in North America. It also increased its utilisation rate by 200 basis points to 76.55 per cent on a q-o-q basis.

“Our revenues for the next year are hedged at an average rate of Rs 40.07 against the dollar,” he said.

Performance for the year ending March 2008 was relatively cheerful with the company missing the guidance by only three percentage points to grow at 22 per cent year-on-year. Net profit, however, was hit by the fluctuating currency. “Though revenues have grown y-o-y, profits have taken the brunt of currency fluctuations,” Mr Srikanth said.

Revenues from the sale of the Intellect range of banking products comprised 19.6 per cent of total revenues for the year ending March 2008 with 12 installations in areas like wealth management, credit cards and core banking solutions. “We have been able to maintain this in the 20 per cent range,” he said. The company plans to extend this range of products beyond US and UK is expanding its distribution network accordingly

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“We have acquired IP (Internet Protocol) from an Australian company this month to add more functionality to Finacle. The IP, which provides a comprehensive set of financial tools to our existing product line is suitable for large banks in European countries who use advance technology,” Infosys Technologies banking division (Finacle) Head Haragopal M told PTI.

He said Finacle with the IP module would be priced separately, which would add to the company’s topline and bottomline in the current financial.

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The total design market in India in 2007 was estmiated at USD six billion. Eightyone per cent of the revenues were in the area of embedded software followed by VLSI design (13 per cent) and hardware/board design (six per cent), the “India semiconductor and embedded design service industry (2007-2010): Market, technology and ecosystem analysis” said.

The total workforce employed in the design services industry in India was estimated at 130,000 in 2007. Of this, the bulk of the jobs were in embedded software (82 per cent) followed by VLSI design (11 per cent) and hardware/board (seven per cent).

The key factors that determine the growth of the design sector in India are: the growing expertise and capabilities in complex end-to-end design; strong IP development and talent, according to the report released by the India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and IDC (India).

“The Indian semicon design industry with over 200 companies is on a strong growth trajectory. Our growth is nearly 22 per cent which is three times the global growth rate of around seven per cent. We are looking eastward for business and collaboration heralding a new era in the future of the sector”, ISA President Poornima Shenoy said.

IDC India’s Country Manager, Kapil Dev Singh said the Indian semiconductor and embedded design services market has grown consistently over the last five years and the market is expected to cross the $7.37 billion mark in 2008.

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These projections are part of the report `Indian Semiconductor and Embedded Design Service industry (2007-08)’ — compiled by the India Semiconductor Association (ISA) and International Data Corporation (IDC).

The key factors that position India as a favoured destination for semiconductor and embedded designs are the growing expertise and capabilities in end-to-end design, intellectual property (IP) development, a strong pool of engineers, emergence of outsourced third party design services companies and cost-effective products.

The report — which maps the market for very large scale system integration (VLSI), hardware/board design and embedded software industry and the market dynamics between the members of the eco-system — has presented a tremendous growth potential to the Indian semiconductor industry.

While ISA president Poornima Shenoy said the Indian industry growth is three times more than the global growth rate of around 7 per cent, IDC (India) country manager Kapil Dev Singh said the industry’s structure was changing as the proximity between the third party service providers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for end-to-end product designs was increasing in the country. Companies are moving up the value chain from mere project execution to end-to-end development of products, the latter said.

On the workforce, the report projected an increase in jobs from 129,900 in 2007 to 218,800 in 2010, a CAGR increase of 18.8 per cent. At present, the bulk of the jobs are in the embedded software (82 per cent) followed by VLSI design (11 per cent) and hardware/board (7 per cent).

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The company has entered into an agreement with Caterpillar Inc, the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines and industrial gas turbines.

The deal for Satyam to acquire Caterpillar’s market research and customer analytics (MR&CA) intellectual property and assets is $60 million (Rs 240 crore).

Satyam will also launch a business unit to provide MR&CA solutions and services globally to Caterpillar and its customers in various industries.

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Revenues for the quarter increased to $54.9 million compared with $47.9 million in the same period last year and $52.8 million in the previous quarter, iGate Corporation CEO Phaneesh Murthy said announcing its first quarter financial results under US GAAP for the three months ended March 31, 2008, in a statement.

Revenues for the quarter increased to $54.9 million compared with $47.9 million in the same period last year and $52.8 million in the previous quarter, iGate Corporation CEO Phaneesh Murthy said announcing its first quarter financial results under US GAAP for the three months ended March 31, 2008, in a statement.

Consolidated revenue from continuing operations stood at $79.8 million, a rise of 7 per cent from the same period last year, an increase of 1 per cent from the last quarter.

“iGATE Solutions business reported another good growth quarter. We added seven new customers this period,” he said.

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The firm, however, reported an 8 per cent fall in its revenue for the quarter ending March 2008 at Rs Rs 265.8 crore compared with Rs 290. 58 crore in the corresponding quarter in FY07.

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“In the Americas, other than the US, countries such as Canada, Brazil and some other markets continue to be buoyant and so is the case with continental Europe. The proportion of continental Europe is likely to go up as we explore more markets, just as most IT services companies are exploring,” Mr Ram Mynampati, Satyam President, said at a news conference.

The company is in pursuit of about 15-20 large deals in the range of $50-100 million and above.

Satyam has added 32 clients, including four Fortune 500 companies during the fourth quarter. The company now has two clients with $100 million and above revenue and 50 with $10 million and above.

The company, which has over 51,000 associates, has had about 18,000 gross additions including business process outsourcing arm, and expects to recruit about 14,000 to 15,000 people depending upon the business needs, this may even go up, Mr V. Srinivas, Chief Financial Officer of Satyam, said.

The focus on de-risking by slashing dependence on top 10 clients has helped the company add a much larger range of enterprise customers from different geographies. Likewise, the focus is on increasing business from non-US economies, particularly Europe and Asia-Pacific.

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