Rivals help sponsor NASSCOM Leadership Forum
By Sandhya

NASSCOM is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 1200 members, which include both Indian and foreign companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOM was set up in 1988 and says its vision it to maintain India’s leadership position.

Even today, for most techies in the IT sector as well as Agents in Indian call centres, NASSCOM is seen as championing their job security in India.

But NASSCOM, despite claiming on its website that it aims to ‘maintain India's leadership position in the global sourcing IT industry, to grow the market by enabling industry to tap into emerging opportunity areas and to strengthen the domestic market in India’, is more about the interests of the owners and shareholders of these companies.

US HQed tech majors like Microsoft, Oracle and Facebook never claim they are there only for American workers and the American Government.  Neither does SAP say they work primarily for Germans.

NASSCOM Indian companies like TCS, Infosys and Genpact have recently set up offices and centres in China, Europe, USA, Philippines and tens of other countries.  Not dissimilar to American tech majors like IBM and Oracle setting up centres in India which provide employment to millions of Indian techies.  Incidentally, these American companies are also members of NASSCOM.

The latest example of NASSCOM promoting the interests of India-based outsourcing companies as well as other outsourcing destinations is the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2010 which will be held on February 09-11 at Mumbai.

NASSCOM is fully aware that a large part of future revenues of Indian tech companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Genpact depend on providing employment to locals at centres in China, Philippines, USA, Latin America and Europe.  To this end, NASSCOM is working very closely with rival outsourcing centres like Germany, Egypt and Brazil.

The NASSCOM India Leadership Forum is not sponsored by Indian companies alone.  The Silver Sponsors include prospective NASSCOM and India rivals like Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Northern Ireland, Egypt and even United Kingdom.  Brazil describes itself on the NASSCOM Leadership website as “Brazil's economic footprint, combined with having the largest domestic IT consumption in all of Latin America, as well as its status as a BRIC nation make it a natural short-listed choice when evaluating potential destinations and partners for IT services.”

The CEO’s Dinner at this conference has been sponsored by booming outsourcing hub Egypt.  In affect, the NASSCOM platform is being used by rivals like Egypt to sell themselves to clients of Indian outsourcing companies.

NASSCOM has done a commendable job in ensuring millions of high paying jobs for Indians and pumping in hundreds of billions of dollars in the Indian economy.  In a global village, American and European techies and BPO Agents lost jobs to India.  NASSCOM American tech majors like IBM and Microsoft see themselves as global businesses.  NASSCOM may have started of championing only India, but it has now realized that it is really represents the interests of the owners and shareholders of Indian IT and BPO companies.  And to this end, NASSCOM is working with outsourcing rivals like Egypt, Brazil, Poland and Philippines.

If more proof were needed that NASSCOM is becoming an international organization, it has even hired British journalist and tech guru Mark Kobayashi-Hillary to become one of the ‘NASSCOM bloggers’ at this Leadership Forum in Mumbai.

Are we seeing the beginning of the end of NASSCOM being seen as an ‘Indian’ organization? In a global village, will every organization project itself as a global player rather than one restricted to the national interests of one country?