Gujarat IT companies diversify operations in US

Barack Obama's return to theWhite House and his strong views against outsourcing jobs overseas may be bad news for the Indian outsourcing industry. However, IT companies in Gujarat have found a way to retain their clients in the US by branching out to other segments. 

IT companies in Gujarat, which relied highly on North American companies, have either started focusing on other countries in Europe and Asia in the last 12 months or have diversified into smaller operations of consulting and providing enterprise solutions to American companies. 
Azure Knowledge Corporation opened an office in Philadelphia in July to run a project for theUS Department of Education. The Ahmedabad-based knowledge processing outsourcing company checks and ranks the quality of US-based call centres which work for the education department in the US. 

Jay Ruparel, co-founder, Azure, "During the presidential campaigning, Obama was pretty serious about keeping jobs in the US, which is why we thought of expanding our services and running quality control projects there. Although the operations are quite small, it will help us deal with any allegation that we are snatching jobs by taking them offshore. Besides, we can retain clients and it will give us a cushion amid slowdown." 

In December 2011, the Obama administration tabled the US Call Centre Bill to put aggressive mandates on all overseas call centre operations. 

Sunil Kakkad, president, Gujarat Electronics & Software Industries Association, said, "Several small companies from Gujarat have opened office in the US and are diversifying into other segments in IT to be safe against new anti-outsourcing policies." Kakkad, who is the chairman and managing director of Sai InfoSystem (SIS), recently started the company's mobile commerce operations in Chicago out of fear that the Obama government may bring out a policy against outsourcing. "The precise reason we started operations in the US is the fear that the government may go against outsourcing anytime," said Kakkad. 

According to the industry's apex body Nasscom, Indian IT firms have recently increased their investment by ten times in US-based centres. This has created around 175,000 jobs in the US, which was facing high unemployment rates at one time. 

Despite the strong anti-outsourcing views, some Gujarat companies are optimistic about the growth of the industry in the US market. Pratul Shroff, founder, eInfochips, said, "Visa rejections soared under Obama's administration and our company also experienced it. But, almost 96 per cent of our revenue comes from the US. It means that whenever there is a crisis, there is potential. Once customers see the value of outsourcing offshore, they will come to Indian companies."