'The playing field is being levelled', the statement made by Mr.Nandan was the inspiration for Mr.Thomas L.Friedman to coin the title for his bestseller 'The World is Flat'.A few weeks ago I went to Bangalore on an official trip. An advertisement board in Bangalore airport grabbed my attention and made me to stand, stare and shake my head. The ad-board has a golf field, Tiger Woods is walking up on a slope in the golf field and the ad-line goes 'There is no such thing as level playing field'.
Probably many would have guessed when I said the name, Tiger Woods. Yes, the advertisement is for the Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing giant, well, global giant, who provides end-to-end solutions to its customers, the one and only Accenture.
I know that Accenture India sucks. Probably Accenture has its shop in India just to show their customers that they have presence in Indian market, which is the most chanted name as the offshoring and oursourcing destination. But definitely Accenture-America is not a sucker. It is so obvious that Accenture sees Infosys as a threat, while Infosys is just a 2.5 billion dollar company originated from India and still in the warming up mode to provide end-to-end solutions to its customers & trying to become a business partner.
As an Indian I am so proud that a company originated from India makes a company like Accenture feel the fear and panic enough to release such an advertisement. I was wondering what would a CEO or CIO some corporate think when he sees such an ad? I felt that this ad is a definite image booster for Infosys.
Actually Accenture is not the first one in that panic list. I think IBM was the first one to (over)react its panic. IBM story goes three years back. In 'Wall Street Journel', (just to emphasize, there wouldn't be a single CEO in US who does not read Wall Street Journel) there was a full page (or a half page - not sure of the size - but that doesn't matter really) ad which goes something like this. 'We are better than any consultancy in Banking domain'.
Irony is in American dictionary you can not find the word 'consultancy'. It clearly shows that IBM felt that TCS was a threat to its business.
For IT solutions, India should become like what China is for manufacturing unless it would be too difficult to run this 'India Story' a few years from now. I believe that research is one important area where India Inc must concentrate more to accelerate the growth and enjoy the benefits of globalization. We can not survive so long just with the low-end jobs being outsourced.
