NEW DELHI, INDIA: British Telecom is excited about Indian market opportunity and is targeting twenty percent of networked IT market in India, which BT expect to be around 24 billion Euro in 2010-11.
The company has also ruled out any lay offs in India in response to the global slow down and expects to continue its positive momentum in the country. British Telecom had recently announced that it would cut 10,000 jobs by March 2009, following an 11 per cent dip in its profit after tax for the first half of the current financial year.
The company had laid off 4000 employees directly recruited by BT and remaining 6000 which were on the job rolls of contractors, consultants and agency staff working for BT.
Speaking to CIOL, Allen Ma, President, BT Asia Pacific, said British Telecom is excited about Indian market opportunity and expects to continue its positive momentum in the country.
“India’s networked IT market is expected to be 24 billion Euro in 2010-11, of which addressable market opportunity for BT is 4.4 billion Euro, which is about 18-20 per cent share. India is a huge market for BT and there is a challenge of scale. We have been able to archieve 40 percent growth for India. We expect to continue our momentum in 2009 also,” said Allen.
Global Layoffs
Allen added that BT Indian doesn’t have any plans to lay off people in India in response to the global slow down and also as part of recent job cut at BT worldwide.
“This is not even in my mind. India is a high growth country and customers here need ICT solutions to help them grow. We as company see lot of opportunity in the country,” said Allen.
Explaining the process of layoff of 10,000 employees by 2009 by BT world wide, Allen said, the process should not be a response to global recession but actually part of consolidation within BT.
“If you put the numbers you are talking about in context, BT isn’t laying off employees from company rolls, we are just not hiring for these vacancies.”
“BT globally every year sees a natural attrition of close to seven thousand employees. What our CEO has decided that we are going to fill only three thousand of those seven thousand people which gives us reduction of four thousand,”says Allen.
“Again remaining, 6000, are on the job rolls of contractors, consultants and agency staff who work with BT on special contracts which could be two months, six months or a year. For these agencies, BT is one of many customers they are serving and they could shift their employees to any other customers,” says Allen.
On global recession impacting business
Allen feels, recession rather than a threat should be seen as a blessing in disguise for CIO’s as this is forcing them to have a re-look at their existing IT infrastructure and how they can fine tune the same to streamline processes, improve productivity and help their enterprises reduce costs.
“Lot of MNCs today are facing challenges in terms of cost cutting which is forcing these companies to go to basics and relook at the the call structure, the cost base etc and ask themselves where they can reduce the cost. This is a financial storm and enterprise are making it sure that as to why and how they are growing the business.
We believe that based on what we have picked up from our customers in last two months is that we are even in a better position to help them grow,” says Allen.
“I see this as an opportunity rather than doom. Of course there are lots of new challenges but it us about how to help customers go through the current challenges and become even more stronger when the storm is behind us,” adds Allen.
.
Shift in Strategy
On BT global strategy to shift from being a a ‘pure connecting player’ to one with massive focus on what BT terms as a networked, converged world, Allen responded saying that, going ahead, connectivity was not the only thing that BT was interested in.
“, If you look at whole point of connecting, the price point has dropped and increasingly it is very difficult to differentiate you connectivity from you competitor. The whole thing of connecting has got commodotised. If you want to can grow our business, you have to create a differentiation and look at the whole ecosystem through which our customer operates.”
“If you look at various industry players, we found out that the ecosystem is actuality very big comprising of various players that come together to help customer deliver their services,” added Allen.
Commenting on whether the acquisition of Frontline by BT, puts BT in direct conflict with Infosys or Wipro, Allen replied that though there may be small overlap but there were lot of complementary strategy between. Wipros and Infosys .
“Actually with the acquisition of Frontline, we have brought new portfolios to our business like we were not in past in outsourcing business in Asia and now because of acquisition we can do outsourcing for our customers in Asia. If they want to outsource entire services to us, Front Line helps to deliver in system integration,” concluded Allen.
