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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Time for consolidation of indian IT Companies has arrived

Indian IT industry has withstood the 2008 recession well, All thanks to the cash pile and the margins and the meager pay salaries over the last two years, The reason for coming out even strongly is the cost cutting measures ranging from sending fewer people on-site, some price negotiations, giving no salary hike for two consuctive years to employees(on name of recession), firing people secretly(so that stock does not plummets) etc, etc, this list goes on.

Putting together these all measures have been very good for the biggies in Indian IT industry like - TCS, Infosys, Wipro etc. These companies have lots of people on their bench hence lowering the bid price in recession time helped in increasing the percentage of billed employees.

This above scenario has not been possible for mid tier IT vendors like, Patni, Tech Mahindra, Mastek all of them still showing decrease in profits YoY, The reason is simple The biggies of Indian IT are eating their food by bidding at the same price of these mid tier companies, thus taking even smaller projects on which the mid tier IT Companies depends. Since the potential client is now well aware of these biggies they prefer to give new projects to these rather then mid tier companies which is the biggest area of concern for these smaller companies.

They can't compete with these biggies thanks to the bench strength and the cash pile of these bigger companies, Now in such a scenario where there looks no hope for smaller and mid tier IT Companies, the best method for coping is to be acquired by the biggies or bid to these biggies at even lesser rate for further outsourcing(looks rare possibility as margins are already wafer thin), adding further to IT companies owes is the increase in Visa fees by US Government.
Thus after Indian IT comes out of the recession completely we can possibly see consolidation in Indian IT space. This would definitely help in making global companies which can compete with likes of Accenture, IBM much more efficiently and effectively. Hence it would not be surprise if news about one of the biggies acquire a mid tier or smaller IT companies which would definitly help in the niche domains where the smaller IT companies work.

Hence I can conclude that time has finally arrived when we can see consolidation in indian IT industry which would definitely make Indian IT companies competency even bigger and more powerful. thus offering some serious competition to US biggies like Accenture and IBM.