KERALA TO HOST NASSCOM EC MEET FOR THE FIRST TIME

National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) is hosting its Executive Council Meet in Trivandrum on 29 September 2011. This is for the first time that the Executive Council is holding its meeting in the state of Kerala. The day-long meeting will be held at the IBS campus in Technopark. NASSCOM is the premier trade body of the IT-BPO industries in India with more than 1200 members whose combined turnover exceeds 95% of the industry’s revenue and employs over 22 lakh professionals.

The Executive Council is the highest decision making body of NASSCOM and consists of business leaders like Mr. Rajendra Singh Pawar Chairman NIIT, Mr. N Chandrasekaran CEO & MD TCS, Mr. T K Kurien CEO Wipro, Mr. Avinash Vashistha Chairman & Country MD Accenture , Mr. R Chandrasekaran President and MD Cognizant Technology, Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik Chairman Microsoft India, Mr. Sudip Banerjee CEO L&T Infotech, Mr. Ganesh Lakshminarayanan President, Dell India, Ms. Neelam Dhawan MD Hewlett-Packard India, Mr. Arun Seth Chairman BT India and Mr. Krishnakumar Natarajan CEO & MD MindTree.

“The EC venue was originally slated for a metro city but we could prevail upon them to choose Kerala. Hosting such meetings is an important step in bringing the state onto the IT map of the country. It is indeed a rare occasion to have so many of the top IT stalwarts in Kerala all together” says Mr. VK Mathews, Executive Chairman of The IBS Group and the key player in bring the Executive Council Meet to the state. “On the 30^th of September, we are arranging a meeting with the Chief Minister, the IT minister and other senior functionaries of the Government, which would be a wonderful opportunity to showcase the core competency of Kerala. This is critical to attract more IT investments into the state” adds Mr. VK Mathews who incidentally is the first NASSCOM Executive Council Member to be selected from Kerala. Mr. Mathews is also the Chairman of GTech, the industry body for the software companies in Kerala.

A two hour interactive session between some of the NASSCOM Executive Council Members and students of select Engineering & Management Institutes is also organized at Mar Baselios College of Engineering & Technology, Trivandrum on 30^th September. “NASSCOM Executive Council represents companies that are the largest recruiters in the country of graduates with professional qualifications. This is a unique, first of its kind opportunity for the students & faculty in Kerala to learn from business leaders first hand, the nuances of the industry and their expectations from the students and academia” says Anoop P Ambika, Secretary, GTech

Dutch offer to tone up agri infra, shipping sectors

The Netherlands Government is looking to engage with the Kerala Government through targeted initiatives aimed at sharing its niche technological knowhow and formidable skills of execution in a variety of areas.

Shipping, logistics, inland waterways and agriculture and food processing suggest themselves as automatic choices as areas of collaboration, Ms Marijke A. van Drunen Littel, Consul-General, Kingdom of The Netherlands, told Business Line here.

PORT DEVELOPMENT

She was in Thiruvananthapuram at the invite of the Group of Technology Companies (GTECH) to scout for opportunities of doing business in the small and medium IT industry space. There are two aspects to getting involved in shipping, she explained. The first one is port development.

“The last time we were here, we had discussions with the Chairman of the Cochin Port Trust,” Ms van Drunen Littel said. The Chairman, Cochin Port Trust, along with the Secretary of the Department of Shipping, New Delhi, have followed this up with a visit to the Netherlands.

Discussions are still on, and the guests from Kerala have now been put in touch with Dutch consultants on ways to developing the Cochin Port Trust area.

The Chairman of the port trust is on record having said that there is lots of spare capacity available at Kochi. He had also wanted a consultant to advise him to how best utilise this idle capacity.

INLAND WATERWAYS

“We are also looking at how we can get involved in the inland waterways sector in Kerala. There’s an MoU between the Indian Government and the Netherlands on developing waterways. We’re already working in the Hooghly area,” the Consul-General said.

The ship building industry, which is growing here, is another sector that also can hope to source technological and managerial inputs from the Dutch industry.

“We’ve specialising in moving heavy equipment through water. If we are to think of the depth of the waters, we should also think of the depth of the barges that can navigate them.”

In the context of Kerala, one might have to redesign barges that don’t go deep into the waterway and still can operate.

“We’ve the requisite technology available. Before I came to India, I was in Brazil where we were doing exactly the same thing over the Amazon and other rivers.

SHIP BUILDING

“We’ve been able to design ships that can negotiate the uneven terrain of the river bed that rises and falls along course. We hope to bring that technology here,” the Consul-General said.

Speaking about the need for developing hinterland connectivity, she said that in the Netherlands basically everything comes out into the Rotterdam port.

“From there we put them on to ships, barges and trucks or trains. And it’s a very sophisticated way of doing it. We’re also specialised in developing the inter-modals. That’s something one should be looking to achieve in Cochin port as well.

“How do we go to the hinterland, how do we reach the port from the hinterland. Those are things we’re specialising in, and a number of companies dealing with the job have been put into touch with the Cochin Port.”

MOU WITH KARNATAKA

According to Mr V. Vijay Kumar, Chief Representative, Netherlands Business Support Office, Chennai, an MoU has been signed with the Karnataka Government for putting up a comprehensive agriculture infrastructure and logistics project.

The Karnataka Government had appointed Mahindra Consulting Engineers to do a detailed study on how to improve the entire agri infrastructure in the State.

And Mahindra identified the Netherlands as the best in terms of sourcing requisite technology and efficiency in agro infrastructure and logistics and had in turn approached the consulate.

This led to the signing of the MoU between the Karnataka Government and the Netherlands Government. A team led by he State Agriculture Minister is going to Netherlands on September 20, subsequent to which we would start work on implementation of the project.

“We would like to do the same thing here, if the Kerala Government is interested,” Mr Kumar said.

INTEGRATED PACKAGE

In fact when the Netherlands delegation came to Bangalore, it was very impressed with the way Mahindra Consulting had done the background work.

The delegation could exactly get to know what it wanted to do, how it should go about doing it and start from where.

“If the Kerala Government is able to do such a pre-feasibility study on what it needs to do to improve logistics sector, then we can step in,” he added.

But, according to Ms van Drunen Littel, Kerala should look at developing the project in an integrated manner.

“This should provide for good ports, good infrastructure and supply and delivery mechanism, including cold chain and reefers etc., packaging the consignment and delivering them on time on ships/trains/trucks that are able to travel at the right speed to deliver at the right places…,” the Consul-General said.

Kerala mulls setting up ICT Academy on PPP model

Chief Minister Shri Oommen Chandy has requested Lakshmi Narayanan, the Vice Chairman of Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) to explore the possibility of setting up an ICT Academy in Kerala on a Private Public Participation (PPP) model similar to the ICT Academy in Tamil Nadu (ICTAT). ICTAT is an initiative of Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu and CII with participation of companies like CTS & TCS to improve the quality of students passing out in TN to make them industry ready and immediately employable in the ICT industry.

Lakshmi had called on the CM at his office in Secretariat during his visit to Thiruvananthapuram to address a meeting of the GTech Leadership Forum on September 02, 2011. The CM has asked GTech to coordinate this initiative and submit a proposal in this regard. On being asked about CTS expansion plans in Kerala, Lakshmi told that they want the Kochi centre to reach a critical mass and then they would consider expanding to other locations in Kerala.

Later interacting with the CEOs and top Executives of IT Companies in Kerala at the GTech Leadership Forum, Lakshmi shared his experiences of founding CTS and leading the company which is now expected to reach the 6 Billion USD revenue milestone by the end of this year. He confided that during their initial years, they didn’t have a vision to build a grand empire but to set modest goals and achieve them. “Customer satisfaction and values on how to do business was part of the culture and DNA of the company. We wanted to deliver not just a service but an experience”, he added.

Lakshmi also mentioned that availability of talent, cost of talent and the ease of doing business are some key factors that often companies decide on where to investment. He advised the budding entrepreneurs present there to specialise and focus on one or two competent areas and then develop in terms of quality and capacity.

K M Chandrashekhar IAS, Vice Chairman, Kerala Planning Board said, “To a great extent, the perception regarding Kerala is different but why Kerala was not a major IT contributor was something that needs some introspection”. He added that the Government was serious about infrastructure and was looking at Private Public Participation for skill development at a very large scale.

GTech is the Group of Technology Companies working out of Government owned IT Parks in Kerala. The GTech Leadership Forum is aimed at bringing the thought leaders on a common platform to formulate an action plan to facilitate the accelerated growth of the IT Industry in Kerala.