INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN CHENNAI

www.chennaibest.com talks to Mahalingam, Executive Vice-President, Tata Consultancy Service (TCS). With TCS for the last 30 years, Mahalingam was instrumental in setting up the first TCS office in London and in building the Madras office from its initial strength of 25 to 30,000 people today.

In the 70s, many of the big business houses in Chennai went in for rapid computerisation, particularly along the Padi belt. But the small and medium enterprises unfortunately are still at the very beginning of the evolutionary ladder. Also, the Government has been very slow in computerisation. We have a large export market, but locally, IT is still used as a recording tool rather than a competitive tool. Chennai is still a very price-sensitive market. The IT boom made Chennai a very big and important place for software development. IT companies find Chennai the natural choice because of the infrastructure. By infrastructure I mean the educational institutions.

As far as I see it, there is no saturation point for IT. We are poised for growth. The 2nd and 3rd generation entrepreneurs are very knowledgeable and techno-savvy. You can see it by the frequency with which they change their hand-sets. Even the old economy companies are now looking into - 'How do I change myself into a knowledge-based industry?'. This dynamism is very interesting. What's stopping us is the slow-paced growth in the domestic market. As I said earlier, computers are still not used as competitive tools in Chennai, they are only used as recording devices for maintaining accounts and database. Once the domestic market develops, we can hope for better prospects.

We have the most developed infrastructure. Its the natural gateway to the world. Chennai is the home of Institutions and traditionally has been a great learning place. The hype to Bangalore is because of the MNCs, but the manpower in Chennai is the best in terms of knowledge.

Yes, I am a great believer in B2C.

Of course, Health and Glow and Subiksha are standing examples. B2B will make operation of organisations efficient upto the conclusion of the manufacturing stage.Success in B2C will depend on the ability with which business is able to reach the customer at a lower cost and in scenarios where the 'touch and feel experience' is not critical to buying products. I see a number of routine purchases in urban households shifting to the net, as it epitomises convenience shopping, especially for working couples who would welcome the elimination of mundane shopping visits.

Disregarding the Public sector, the strength of non-IT business is big in Chennai. We are strong in the traditional industries, and all the big businesses are thinking in terms of IT. So not only the growth in IT sector, but also the dynamism and receptivity of non-Knowledge-based Industries to IT counts. Which is what is happening in Chennai now.

The one way to evaluate this situation is to ask ourselves "Has this hurt us in any way?" Going by pure data, "No", because inspite of everything, we have had so many Companies coming in to invest in Chennai. But then, when people overseas think of India, they think of Bangalore and Chandrababu Naidu. No! not even Hyderabad.

That said, I will like to point out the fact that there is a lot of activity going on in Chennai, but we have been lacking in articulation. We have got good Government support. Our Chief Minister has been particularly very supportive. I will put this purely to lack of marketing.

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