India: Its size, its people, its coming of age.
Swati Prasad is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist who spent much of the mid-1990s and 2000s covering brick-and-mortar industries for some of India's leading publications. Seven years back when she took to freelancing, India was at the peak of its "outsourcing hub" glory and the world of Indian IT, telecom and Internet fascinated her. A self-proclaimed technophobic, Swati loves to report on anything that's remotely alien to her--be it cloud computing, telecom, BPOs, social media, e-government or software and hardware, and also how high-tech sectors impact the Indian economy.
Today's newspapers carry a photograph of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz offering a bouquet of flowers to India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.It wasn't just another meeting between the Indian PM and the CEO of a multinational.
Today is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday--or Gandhi Jayanti, as the day is known here in India. While most know Gandhiji as the pioneer of satyagraha (resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience) that was founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence, he was also a good economist.
Social networking has assumed immense importance in our lives. Over the last few months, we have seen how a tweet, a profile status or personal information on Facebook can cost some people their job, marriage, image and much more.
The auction for 3G spectrum was to happen in December 2008, but a host of issues (such as lack of agreement between ministries over the reserve price for the spectrum, the forthcoming general elections, the global financial meltdown coupled with telecom operators' reluctance in making huge expenditure on 3G) led to the deferment of the auction.Now, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has announced that auction for 3G spectrum will take place on Dec.
In March 2007, I got the opportunity to visit the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was interesting to visit the alma mater of thousands of successful engineers and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
India's demographics (50 percent of India's population is below the age of 25 years) has been perceived as both a boon and a bane. During this decade, however, we have repeatedly heard the phrase "India's demographic advantage".
When you are used to double-digit growth rates (ranging from 13 to 50 percent per annum), a growth forecast of 4 to 7 percent definitely comes as a surprise. At Chennai today, Nasscom (the trade body of Indian IT-BPO industry) announced that the industry is estimated to grow by 4 to 7 percent in the current financial year (2009-10).
For business journalists in India, budget time is excitement time. It's like sports journos covering the Olympics.
In his book Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, talks about how the future of India depends not just on simple economic growth, but also on reforms and innovations in all sectors of public life.Today, he has the rank equivalent to that of an Indian Cabinet Minister to put many innovative ideas to practice.
Do companies that wash their hands of several functions--especially "customer care"--by handing over contracts to business process outsourcing (BPO) outfits really "care" about their customers?More importantly, even after nearly a decade of having them around, most call centers remain centers of inefficiencies.