Religion key to India’s success

Religion is probably more decisive than any traditional academic strength in science and engineering in helping India excel in information technology.

Girija Pande, who is in charge of Tata Consultancy Services in the Asia-Pacific, offered this unorthodox view when asked why Indians are so good at IT. “Somehow it has to do with religion. You know the majority of Indians, or about 80 per cent, are Hindu. Religion helps the Indians to look from the ridiculous to the sublime,” he said.

“First, we have 330 million Gods in the latest count. Then we also have the Buddhist philosophy, which is very sublime. With this broad spectrum, we are able to work well in the grey area.”

Pande accompanied S Ramadorai, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, to Bangkok last week as part of a regional tour to look for business opportunities. Tata Consultancy Services is one of the world’s largest software and services companies. It employs 29,000 consultants and operates out of 88 offices in 50 countries. Its revenue last year reached about US$1.4 billion (Bt56.6 billion).

Ramadorai joined in with his observation about why India has been able to produce a huge pool of IT talent. “We are good at looking at abstracts or forming logical thoughts. We can work well in the environment that is complex and chaotic. We also look at problems in the holistic way. Indians are good at software programs because this requires an analytical mind,” he said.

There are 500,000 engineering graduates from Indian universities and colleges every year. Of these, only 30,000 go abroad to seek employment. So India is not suffering from a brain drain since the majority of engineers stay home.

Ramadorai said Tata Consultancy Services recruited most of its staff from the local job market and provided training for them. It also worked closely with the academic and business communities in research and development.

Tata Consultancy Services offers global solutions to global firms. Of the top-10 firms on the Fortune 500 lists, eight are its clients. The US is its largest market, followed by Europe. India accounts for only 7 per cent of the group’s business. Now it is looking forward to expanding its business in the Asia-Pacific, where it already has a strong presence in Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.

In Thailand, Tata Consultancy Services has been advising top clients by providing IT solutions to such companies as General Motors, Thai Cement, GE and Thai Carbon.

Thai companies are moving toward a critical phase of new investment and expansion. They are now required to upgrade their technology, which in many cases has been delayed because of the 1997 financial crisis. Moreover, several Thai companies are also embarking on a regional expansion, which requires them to put in place more advanced systems.

“We provide value for Thai companies that want to go regional by providing global solutions with Indian technology and cost,” Ramadorai said.

So what are the most frequently asked questions by Thai companies looking to upgrade their operations? “They want to know how best to outsource their operations. Another question is how they can acquire the skills in some of the latest technologies, such as enterprise-resource programmes, telecommunications or manufacturing,” Pande said.

Tata Consultancy Services is part of the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate. Tata Group, founded in 1868, has diversified its business into IT, finance, hospitality, automobiles, engineering, materials, chemicals and agro-business, telecommunications and energy. The group operates 80 companies with combined revenues of more than $10 billion and has more than 230,000 employees.