NASSCOM Leadership Forum: Too may chiefs and Indians?
By Sandhya

While NASSCOM does a good job promoting the business interests of the Indian IT-ITES sectors, some of its conferences provide good reasons for many people to enjoy a junket.  Stay in a five star hotel in Mumbai.  Lots of speakers saying the same things.  Much networking, backslapping and boozy parties after ‘work’ is over.

Everyone needs a break from work.  And some of these conferences provide the perfect excuse to get out of town.

NASSCOM has always got good press in India.  It also ropes in high profile executives as well as bloggers to become ‘official NASSCOM bloggers’.  This is another way of ensuring they can control the message.  No hard hitting journalist has been invited to become a NASSCOM blogger at the latest leadership conference.

The NASSCOM India Leadership Forum held on Feb 9 – 11, 2010 is a case in point.  This leadership forum has a theme ‘New Times, New Ideas, New Directions’.  Check out the NASSCOM site to see that while there are discussions of substance, there is nothing new being presented there. The NASSCOM site has the usual marketing hype about the ‘next wave of growth’ and ‘global leaders getting together to share their vision’.

How much to attend this NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2010?  Not cheap.  Non members pay Rs. 34,000 for 3 days while SME’s pay only Rs. 27,000.

A Techgoss spy at the conference describes it as the same old faces saying the same old things.  Each networking to ensure their company has even more clients in the future. There is also much lobbying for prestigious NASSCOM posts.

What is interesting is that despite charging Rs. 30K for 3 days, space was an issue at this NASSCOM Leadership Forum.  Attendee Peter York blogged at the NASSCOM site

“
The combined space of the Grand Ballroom at the Hyatt was bursting at the seams and could barely hold the delegates at the inaugural session even as Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan thanked NASSCOM for “making Mumbai a permanent venue for the event”.  I saw more than a CEO or two gingerly weaving their way through the crowd to find a place to stand, leave alone a seat.

I’m also told that NASSCOM had to turn back more than 150 delegates who wanted to register, purely anticipating the lack of space. So while NASSCOM continues to do a great job of attracting the industry to its annual event – now in its 18th edition – will Mumbai play host to the event next year? Any bidders?
“

Suresh Kochattil replied to Peter’s blog post by saying: “I too felt that the space at Grand Hyatt was short. Maybe its time we try out the Hyderabad International Convention Centre. That place can hold 3000 plus crowd very easily. So NASSCOM will have to look at the option next year.”

While most of the conference went well, another gripe was lack of live feeds for Indian IT-BPO workers who wanted to share the NASSCOM experience.  As NASSCOM had a sell out conference, it should have broadcast the Leadership Summit on the internet for the rest of India to enjoy. Most tech conference in India and overseas try to share the experience live on the net.

IIT Graduate and Co-Founder, Wingz, Aakash Kumar, used his Twitter account RTinkslinger to tweet to NASSCOM

“
@nasscom Please for the love of god check out TED and next when you have a conf or a forum, at least share talk vids if not a live feed!
@nasscom The organisation is supposed to represent Indian IT innovation! Still not familiar with collaborations and open gardens concepts!?
@nasscom If you are still uninitiated with the concept of sharing, check out TED. Why can't you create live feeds and share vids too!?
“

NASSCOM realized its mistake and twittered back

“
nasscom: @RTinkslinger : Thank you for the feedback. Will try and improve upon it.
“

According to our spy,  overall the conference went well.  But NASSCOM has to ensure more comfortable space in the future as well as provide live feeds to the rest of the world.

One last thing.  Why does the official site say ‘*The website is best viewed in IE 6 and above and Mozilla Firefox’. What about Apple and Google browsers?  Shouldn’t NASSCOM be technology neutral?

(Techgoss had published the following on Feb 5, 2010)

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?