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The IP imperative for IT Services or How to Beat the Recession

The Indian IT Services industry is going to feel the pain of the US recession which is likely to spread to other major markets as well. This recession is going to be different as I have said before.

What do you do, when you are faced with a near certain slow down? You can try and squeeze whatever juice you can out of your as-is business, but that will take you only so far. Or you can choose to breathe some new life into your value prop and perhaps change the trajectory of your company. More »

Changing Times for IT Services

The last twelve months have been ugly for IT Services stocks. As an industry it was probably the worst performing industry in the Indian stock market. The chart below of Infosys vs. Sensex makes the point better than I can ever describe it.

Source: Bloomberg.com

Going by last year’s results for the bigger players, this deep dive was not quite deserved. More »

How Will IT Services Fare in the Coming US Recession

Most commentators put a high probability on the US going into a recession. What began with a problem of imprudent housing loans in the US has snow balled into a crisis for the Financial Services industry and an almost certain slowdown in consumer spending. How this impacts the Indian IT Services industry requires some analysis. More »

Indian IT Services - Right Turn Ahead

Is the Indian IT Services party over? Is a decade of growth and wealth creation coming to an end? And if that is so, what can we read in the tea leaves.

There are three fundamental reasons why the IT Services industry finds itself in a challenging environment. One, the dollar-rupee rate. Two, wage growth. And three, slower revenue growth. More »

The real deal with offshore captives

Recently Forrester Research released a report that says that offshore captives, which have been much in vogue for the last three years, are “imploding”. A blog post here makes for interesting reading, especially the comments. More »

The H1-B visa program needs a revamp

This year the INS received 150,000 H1-B visa applications for the coming year starting in October, on the first day that it started accepting applications - for a total of 65,000 visas! An article in the New York Times takes a look at the issues surrounding this. A table from the same article reproduced below gives you the breakup of the visas requested by company. Indian IT Services companies are the only companies at the top of the list.

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More IT Services Bashing

Sujai Karampuri in Need Product Companies for India’s Growth makes an unconvincing case for encouraging the high tech industry in India. On the way he quotes data on the IT Services industry to prove his point that More »

A Tale of Two Techies

Taking up from where I left off last week. Based upon the analysis it appears that the dramatic growth in the IT Services industry in India is the primary force in shaping the Indian techie. The Indian techie is a bright person who did well in college, but even after a few years in the industry, is low on technical depth. Before he can really sink his teeth into something, he is pulled into project management. Not because Indians or Indian companies don’t care about technical depth, but because if they have to meet demand and grow, they have no choice. And to paraphrase Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street – Growth is good.

A study in contrasts is that other techie – the American techie. More »

Where are All the Senior Developers in India?

I hope you got a chance to play around with the spreadsheet that I posted last week. I finally got the embedded spreadsheet to work, so you can make changes and see the outcomes right there on the blog post. Isn’t that just a thing of beauty?

The model in the spreadsheet is quite simple, but it can explain a few things - for example, why in India ‘experienced developer’ has become an oxymoron. You simply don’t find developers with more than 5 years of experience. The Valley stands on the broad shoulders of seasoned developers who can weave magic with their keyboards and relish being individual contributors. Try finding these guys in Bangalore. More »

Model for Indian IT Services

The Indian IT Service industry has seen some phenomenal growth numbers. This year, some of the bigger companies like Infosys and TCS continue to post gravity-defying growth figures. Growth has many implications for the industry – most of them positive. A not-so-positive fallout of growth is its impact on the staffing model.

Growth has a pretty direct relationship with two variables:

- Average experience of Project Managers
- Span of control in projects

To illustrate these relationships, I have created a staffing model for the IT Services industry. The model vastly simplifies the dynamics but is nevertheless a close approximation of reality.
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