E Europe presence turns indispensable for IT cos
Infosys Technologies recent takeover of Philips’ captive BPO business brought it a 765 people centre in Poland. TCS, Satyam and Genpact have presence in Romania and Hungary while Wipro Technologies has a centre in Czech Republic.
The common factor here is that most of the Indian IT biggies seem to be eyeing eastern Europe as a base, despite the fact that these countries are high-cost locations with salary levels over 2.5 times that of the Indian IT industry. Analysts feel that it has become imparative for Indian companies to have a global footprint to meet the market demands, regardless of the costs associated with it.
Accordign to a KPMG-Nasscom report on Emerging Destination for Indian IT/ITes industry, Poland is the costliest country in the region (eastern Europe) and the salaries are three times higher when compared to India and the didfference rises with seniority . the repirt adds that most of the locations in eastern Europe are costlier than India in terms of wages for IT professionals.
A similar trend prevails in Central and South American region, through the difference is not as wide as in Europe. The east Europian regions has a strong multilingual capability which can service the western European market ot a place like Philipines which has superior quality in voice services especially for US market. However, the expansion into overseas locations would in no way diminish the importance of India.
