Our Cricket world cup ambitions might have been dampened after the losing to Bangladesh, but there is no dampening the ambitions of the Indian IT Services firms. Today as i headed to the Economic times site, two articles awaited indicating the growing ambitions of Indian IT Services providers, First was the one on TCS (Largest - 4 Billion $ Revenue) investing to promote a global brand and second was on Satyam (4th largest) going after 10 deals each greater than 50 Million $.

TCS Wants a global brand

The $4-billion TCS, to launch its first global branding campaign.
This will also be the first time an Indian IT company will invest in a focused manner to build a brand. According to sources, TCS will spend close to $8-10 million over next 12 months to stencil the campaign punch-line "Experience Certainty" in the minds of thousands of its customers and its own employees.

"I was at a global IT conference where I met an IBM Global Services person. He said TCS had better people, better product but luckily (for IBM) they did not know how to market themselves," Siegel & Gale group director, strategy Denis Riney says.

Till now, Indian companies have fought shy of building a company-specific brand. They have used the 'India advantage' story, low cost, plentiful manpower, sound software engineering skills, to get business.
They have been hugely successful at this. The top companies' revenues have been growing at 30% and profits at 20-25%.Making it a generic play and thereby letting the customer bundle them together with no differentiation.

Satyam looking at 10 deals , each > 50mn$

Satyam clinched four large deals of over $100 million last year. The company won a contract from the North American division of Nissan Motor to maintain, support and enhance the application software portfolio. The services to be provided by Satyam covered business functions such as product development, sales and marketing across multiple manufacturing units and locations. Satyam also clinched sub-contracts for a large order from General Motors from principal vendors HP and Cap Gemini. These orders were worth up to $150 million over a five-year period. The company also bagged a contract from Qantas Airways, worth $55 million (Rs 243 crore).

Satyam Computer Services is currently said to be pursuing 10 large contracts of over $50 million each. "These are large deals and have a 9-12 month gestation period".

The attached graphic highlights TPI's view of the deal pipeline.

Source: 1, 2

Prashanth Rai