Sunday, August 8, 2010

Dutch IT Companies doing well in Kerala

IT Companies from the Netherlands are doing well in Technopark, Trivandrum. This was one of the revelations that came during an interactive session today in Trivandrum with Ms. Marijke van Drunen Littel, Consul General of the Netherlands, Mumbai. ARS and RickshawSoft are two of the companies that shared their experiences in Kerala and particularly, Technopark.

ARS Software is a subsidiary of ARS Traffic & Transport Technology BV, The Netherlands and has been in Technopark since 2001. ARS provides Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), services and solutions to major traffic and transport related clients in Europe. RickshawSoft Smart Solutions, a subsidiary of RiksjaSoft BV, The Netherlands is a fairly new entrant having set up their shop about nine months back and provides Retail software, solutions and services to clients including big retail organisations in Europe.

Sharing his experiences Martijn van der Spek, MD, ARS said that doing business and working in India for the last nine years has been really good and Kerala is like a second home for him. They are very impressed with the facilities in Technopark as with the talent available here.

Wim Krämer, CEO, RickshawSoft said the availability of cheap and highly skilled manpower in Kerala is the biggest attraction for European companies to come here or to do business with IT companies here. According to him, a company can get four employees here for the cost of one in Europe. (Btw, it looks like the name of his company is truly inspired by India!)

Hugo Messer, CEO of Bridge Outsourcing BV who started Bridge India, a web development and web designing company in Kochi shared his experiences in Kerala with Kerala IT News, “For our company, the loyalty, high skills and hard working attitude of people from Kerala, bring a lot of advantages. Before starting in India, one of the sounds that we often heard was of high attrition rates in India. Since we started in 2008, not a single employee has left our company deliberately." He would certainly recommend more companies from the Netherlands to set shop here. “Kerala is a very good choice at the moment as salaries are still much lower than in the Tier 1 cities, people are very friendly and living in Kerala is a pleasure”, he added.

Earlier Ms. Marijke spoke about the immense potential that the Netherlands offer for Indian Companies. She also spoke about the various projects by the Dutch in India and specifically in Kerala.

The session was organised by the InKEL forum of Excellence in association with the NIPM Trivandrum Chapter. T Balakrishnan IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Industries & Commerce, Govt. of Kerala; John Mathai, Chairman, Public Sector Restructuring and Internal Audit Board (RIAB); Dr. G C Gopala Pillai, MD, Infrastructures Kerala Ltd. (InKEL); Binu Sankar, CEO, GTech were among the many CEOs and top officials from companies who attended the session.

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