Indiaâs outsourcers face higher taxation
230943
(InfoWorld) - Export revenue of a large number of Indian outsourcing companies was brought under the tax net in the country's federal budget. The tax could be the first of measures by the government to reduce tax benefits for the country's outsourcing industry. Prices that outsourcers charge their customers are unlikely to go up as a result, but profit margins will be affected, said N. Ramachandran, chief financial officer of outsourcer iGATE Global Solutions. In his budget speech before India's Parliament Wednesday, Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced the decision to extend a minimum alternate tax (MAT) to income that is currently covered under tax exemptions. There are other tax issues looming for the Indian outsourcing industry, consisting of software services, business process outsourcing (BPO), and call center companies. A large number of the operations of these companies were set up under an export-promotion scheme called the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), which entitled them to tax breaks under the Indian Income Tax Act. However, the STPI scheme ends next year. Although the industry and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) have asked for an extension of the scheme for another 10 years, the finance minister made no reference to this request in his budget speech. The imposition of MAT is disappointing, as is also the absence of any announcement on the continuation of tax benefits beyond next year, said Ananda Mukerji, managing director and CEO of Firstsource Solutions, a BPO company in Mumbai. If the STPI scheme is not renewed, outsourcing companies will have to locate themselves in special economic zones (SEZs) for tax benefits. Under the STPI scheme they could locate their facilities where it was most viable for them from the point of view of cost and availability of staff, Ramachandran said. A small group of executives in India's outsourcing industry, including N. R. Narayana Murthy, chairman of Infosys Technologies, believes that the outsourcing industry is now large enough to pay taxes at levels similar to other industries in India. The finance minister has also brought employee stock options (ESOPs) under a fringe benefit tax. This move will make current ESOPs expensive, and will make it difficult for the IT industry that uses ESOP as a major tool to attract talent, said Deepak Ghaisas, CEO of the India operations and chief financial officer of i-flex solutions ltd., a financial software company that is majority owned by Oracle. The focus of the budget this year was on the agriculture sector, where growth is faltering. India's gross domestic product is forecast to grow by 9.2 percent in the year to March 31, with 11.3 percent growth in the manufacturing sector, and 11.2 percent growth in the services sector. Growth in the country's agriculture sector is likely to be only about 2.3 percent. There are about 115 million families engaged in agriculture in the country.
144680
The debate continues over how much skilled work in the vast service sector of the American economy can migrate offshore to lower-cost nations like India.
471618
(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs outsourcing industry continues to do well despite theÂ appreciation of the Indian rupeeÂ against the U.S. dollar and higher staff costs. Indiaâs second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies, Wednesday revised slightly upwards its revenue forecast for its fiscal year to next March 31. The company said it expects revenue to grow by 29 to 31 percent during the year to between $4 billion and $4.05 billion. Infosys, of Bangalore,Â said in AprilÂ that it expected its revenue to grow by 28 to 30 percent to about $4 billion during the year. The company, which is listed both on Indian and U.S. stock exchanges, has however revised downward its revenue forecast in rupees, to take into account the appreciation of the rupee. Indiaâs software and services exports areÂ projected to growÂ by 26 to 29 percent to about $40 billion in the fiscal year to next March 31, India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said this month. The countryâs revenue from exports of software and services and business process outsourcing (BPO) grew 33 percent to $31.3 billion in the fiscal year to last March 31, according to Nasscom in Delhi. The appreciation of the Indian rupee against the U.S. dollar pushes down rupee realizations for revenue earned abroad by Indian companies, even as staff costs in India are going up. The U.S. is the largest market for Indian outsourcers, accounting for about 66 percent of export revenue. Indian outsourcing companies seem to be holding out well against the pressures. Infosys of Bangalore has maintained its net margins despite the rupee appreciation, higher wages, and costs of visas to the U.S., the company said Wednesday, while announcing its results for the quarter ended June 30. iGate Global Solutions, a mid-size outsourcer in Bangalore, also said Wednesday that it had nearly doubled its operating margins in the quarter over the same quarter last year, despite a stronger rupee, on account of higher rates from customers, higher utilization, and increased use of offshore delivery of services. In the quarter ended June 30, Infosys posted revenue of $928 million up by 40.6 percent over the same quarter last year. The company's profits for the quarter were $263 million up by 51 percent from the same quarter last year. Infosysâ results are in compliance with US GAAP ( Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The company added 35 new clients and 3,730 employees during the quarter taking the total number of employees as on June 30 to 75,971. Infosys plans to hire 26,000 more staff during the current fiscal year. Infosys and other Indian outsourcers compete with multinational services companies such as Accenture and IBM, which have set up offshore services delivery centers in India to take advantage of the lower cost of staff in the country. There is, however, enough business going around for both Indian and multinational companies, according to Indian outsourcers. The crunch comes in relation to hiring new staff. Wipro, Indiaâs third largest outsourcer will be announcing its results for the quarter next week.
290406
Indian outsourcing companies should expand their operations to other low-cost countries if they want to maintain their edge, experts said Thursday at an international software conference.
439282
Indian outsourcers already have a large share of outsourced application development and maintenance and are dominant in business process outsourcing. The country is now targeting a larger share of the market for remote infrastructure management services (IMS), and is planning to more than double revenue from these services to $15 billion by 2013.IMS involves managing an enterprise&#8217;s core IT systems, including hardware, software, connectivity and people. The IMS industry is moving towards a remote delivery model where services are increasing delivered from low-cost locations by service providers and wholly-owned services subsidiaries of user companies, according to a report released Thursday by India&#8217;s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).Customers in the US and Europe are increasingly willing to outsource IMS to offshore locations, because the data does not move out of the home countries, and is only managed remotely, said Siddharth Pai, a partner at sourcing consultancy firm,Technology Partners International (TPI) in Houston, Texas.In India, IMS business is going both to Indian outsourcers, and the Indian operations of large IT services companies, Pai said. Because of the large staff component involved in IMS, there are cost benefits in outsourcing IMS to low-cost, offshore locations like India, he added.Research done by management consultancy firm McKinsey for Nasscom, suggests that the IMS business could generate between 325,000 to 375,000 jobs in India by 2013, as 70 to 75 percent of the roles in IMS can be moved offshore.Low-cost locations, including India, have so far captured a mere $6 to 7 billion&#160;of the IMS opportunity.Indian outsourcers have so far learned to price their services on the basis of staff time utilized. They now have to learn more sophisticated pricing that takes into account other parameters like amount of computing power being managed, if they are not to risk losing money in the business, Pai said.
528471
India&#39;s third largest outsourcer Wipro reported a 32 percent increase in revenue in the quarter ending December 31, but profits grew by only 11 percent over the same quarter last year, reflecting&#160;higher salaries in India, and reduced margins as a result of its&#160;acquisition last year of U.S. IT services provider Infocrossing.Infocrossing&#39;s margins were lower than that of Wipro even before the acquisition, although the company said last year that it hoped to increase utilization at its datacenters by offering the option of hosting in the U.S. to some of its outsourcing clients.Wipro&#39;s revenue for the quarter was 52.36 billion rupees ($1.33 billion) at the exchange rate on the closing date of the quarter, while its profits were 8.26 billion rupees. Wipro&#39;s revenue from its export business, Global IT Services and Products, was 36.14 billion rupees, up by 26 percent over the same period last year.The U.S. economy, which is the largest market for Indian outsourcers, is facing challenges, but there has not been any impact yet on Wipro, Azim Premji, chairman of the company told analysts.Indian largest outsourcer, Tata Consultancy Services, and second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies, both reported strong revenue growth for the quarter, despite concerns that the Indian outsourcing industry was likely to be hit by the&#160;weakening of the U.S. dollar. The U.S. is the largest market for Indian outsourcers, accounting for about 66 percent of export revenue, and the rupee has appreciated by about 12 percent against the dollar from the beginning of this year.The appreciation of the rupee against the U.S. dollar pushes down rupee realizations for revenue earned in the U.S. by Indian companies, even as staff costs in India are going up.Wipro got better prices for its services during the quarter, and added 39 new clients, which helped push up its top line. Improved price realizations and productivity also helped counter the impact of the weakening dollar, said Suresh Senapaty, Wipro&#39;s chief financial officer. &quot;We have a healthy pipeline of large deals going forward,&quot; Premji said.The company had 79,832 employees as of December 31, which included 59,925 employees in its IT Services and products business and 19,907 employees in its BPO (business process outsourcing) services business.
124190
Outsourcing of American jobs to Asia has become a hot-button issue in the presidential election with White House aspirant Senator John Kerry promising the most sweeping reform of international tax law in four decades to halt the trend.
658733
The Indian consulting firm continues to battle wage pressures and a higher currency.
216393
The government offered tax concessions to exporters and proposed the creation of free trade zones in a plan unveiled Tuesday aimed at doubling India&#39;s share of global trade in five years.
62743
India's vital outsourcing industry, which relies heavily on the Internet, struggled to overcome supply disruptions Thursday after damage to undersea cables in the Mediterranean.
481950
Indian professionals, venture capitalists (VCs), and entrepreneurs of Indian origin helped promote India as an outsourcing destination, according to a study conducted for the World Bank Institute in Washington, D.C., by Evalueserve Inc., a business intelligence and research firm.
725455
(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs business providing software and services to companies outside its borders will grow a healthy 26 to 29 percent this year, the country's main trade association for that sector said Monday. Revenue from exports of software, services and business process outsourcing (BPO) will reach about $40 billion for the fiscal year that ends next March 31, according to data released Monday by the National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM). Export revenue from these sectorsÂ grew 33 percent to $31.3 billionÂ in the fiscal year to March 31,Â according to data released by the trade body. The strong growth in software and services exports is coming from an improvement in India's competitiveness, and the addition of new services, such as remote infrastructure management, by Indian service providers, Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM told reporters in Bangalore on Monday. The revenue figure also includes exports to their parent companies and clients by Indian subsidiaries of multinational companies such as IBM, Oracle, and Accenture, that are expanding fast in India. Indiaâs overall IT industry grew by 30.7 percent in the year to March 31 to earn revenue of $39.6 billion, with the domestic market also growing by 22 percent to $8.2 billion, NASSCOM said. Many multinational companies including Hewlett-Packard and IBM have bagged outsourcing contracts from Indian companies. The Indian IT industry employed about 1.6 million staff as of March 31, besides about 6 million indirect staff employed in supporting the large offshore software development and BPO operations in India, Karnik said. About 1.2 million people are employed in developing software and running back office processes and call centers for customers abroad. The U.S. continues to be the largest market for Indian exports, accounting for 66 percent of revenue, Karnik said. Indiaâs IT industry is facing high staff attrition and salary increases, but that will not slow down growth, Karnik said. In the short term, NASSCOM, of Delhi, is helping set up finishing schools that will make more Indian graduates employable by the IT and the BPO industry, he said. In the long-term, though, NASSCOM is counting on more investments by government and industry in the education sector, he added. The IT industry in India is also grappling with the strengthening of the Indian Rupee against the US dollar, which pushes down realization in Rupees of revenue earned abroad by Indian companies. In the year to March 31, exports of IT services grew by 35.5 percent to $18 billion, while exports of BPO services grew 33.5 percent to $8.4 billion. Revenue from exports of engineering services, a classification that deals with non-electronic design services, grew by 23 percent to $4.9 billion.
464907
India's premier software body has said outsourcing of engineering services by global firms presented the country with a 40-billion-dollar opportunity.
761571
(InfoWorld) - Indian chief information officers (CIOs) are finding it harder to recruit staff because of large-scale hiring by the countryâs outsourcing industry, a Gartner researcher said Monday. Indiaâs top IT services providers, focused on the global market, are regarded as the best employers, and get the best IT staff in the country, said Partha Iyengar, research vice president at Gartner, in a conference call. Indian user organizations are hence finding it very difficult to attract and retain technical staff, particular in the middle management, Iyengar said. A large number of Indian and multinational services companies have set up services delivery operations in India, and hire staff by the thousands each quarter. The problem for user organizations may only get worse as outsourcing companies start hiring business line managers as well to build their vertical industry expertise, Iyengar added. As large Indian outsourcers grow in revenue by 30 to 40 percent each year, they will hire business managers from the banking, manufacturing, and retail industries, bringing business knowledge that can be integrated into their services offerings, he added. This movement of business managers from the user industry to outsourcers will make it more difficult for CIOs to complete projects, as companies will have fewer business staff available to participate in the project, according to Gartner. India is fastÂ emerging as a key marketÂ in the Asia-Pacific region for outsourcing contracts, according to outsourcing consultancy firm, Technology Partners International Inc. (TPI) in Houston, Texas. Of the total value of contracts awarded in the region last year, Indian customers accounted for 24.8 percent, TPI said. That puts the country ahead of China with a 4.4 percent share, but still behind Australia at 32.4 percent and Japan at 26.8 percent, Peter Allan, a partner at TPI said Monday. Faced with shortage of staff, Indian user organizations are looking to outsourcing IT functions. But Indian outsourcing companies have not shown great interest in this business, as they are more focused on more lucrative business abroad, Gartnerâs Iyengar said. Multinational service providers like IBM andÂ AccentureÂ have bagged some of the larger contracts, but that still leaves a large number of Indian companies with smaller outsourcing contracts, who canât find a good service provider, Iyengar added. Indian IT spending is growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8 percent, the highest in the Asia-Pacific region, to over $36 billion by 2009, Gartner said. This increase comes from rising expectations from businesses for IT to play a larger role in growth, efficiency and competitive advantage, it added.
71658
Indian officials today disclosed details on revenues from IT outsourcing for the last year.
741488
(InfoWorld) - India's largest outsourcer, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), reported Monday strong growth in revenue and profit, despite theÂ appreciation of the Indian rupeeÂ against the U.S. dollar and higher staff costs in India. The company reported for the quarter ended June 30 revenue of 52 billion rupees ($1.28 billion), up 25.6 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The company's profit for the quarter was 11.8 billion rupees, up 37.4 percent from the same quarter in the previous year. TCS' revenue and profit were, however, flat in rupee terms in the quarter to June 30 in comparison to the previous quarter ended March 31, reflecting the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar. Revenue and profit, however, grew 8 percent quarter-on-quarter in dollar terms. The company added 54 clients and 5,512 employees during the quarter, taking the number of employees to 94,902. Staff attrition rate in the quarter was 11 percent in its IT services business, with the attrition rate higher at 16.7 percent in its business process outsourcing (BPO) business. TCS, of Mumbai, said its net margins were not affected despite the rupee appreciation and a planned wage increase during the quarter, because of better cost management, currency hedging and productivity increases. A strong rupee affects margins of Indian companies as it brings down the value of foreign revenue in terms of rupees, even as costs incurred in India, such asÂ staff costs, are going up. India's second largest outsourcer,Â Infosys Technologies, reportedÂ last week a 40.6 percent growth in revenue and 51 percent growth in profits in the quarter. India's software and services exports are projected to grow by 26 percent to 29 percent to about $40 billion in the fiscal year to next March 31, India's National Association of Software and Service Companies said this month.
369306
India's largest outsourcer, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), reported Monday strong growth in revenue and profit, despite theÂ appreciation of the Indian rupeeÂ against the U.S. dollar and higher staff costs in India.