India's dominance in IT services unchallenged : Infosys

Bangalore, Oct 11 (UNI) Notwithstanding the hardening of the rupee against the US Dollar, India still remained the champion of IT services and comfortably placed numero uno in IT and BPO space, the top brass of Infosys Technologies today said, even as a senior official cautioned on huge inflow of foreign funds into the country.

Company CEO S Gopalakrishnan, speaking to newspersons after announcing the company's results for the second quarter of the current fiscal, said despite rupee appreciation, IT companies enjoyed good margins.

The East European countries, China and countries like Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam still had a long way to go before challenging India's supremacy.

''India will stay ahead due to the conducive atmosphere and mind power,'' he felt.

Director (Human resources) T V Mohandas Pai felt the service levels offered by the IT industry in India had no parallel yet.

''The country hired more than six lakh professionals, mainly software engineers, in the IT space in the first six months of this year.

Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan had a word of caution saying a lot of foreign funds were flowing into the country that might become uncomfortable to handle.

''Many world currencies are volatile in their values and similarly rupee may also be affected. One should not conclude the rupee will continuously drive upwards. It is a two way movement and it can move either way,'' he said.

Head of BPO Business Amitabh Chaudhury said the subprime crisis witnessed in the US this year had not hurt the IT sector much.

''Infosys has four clients in the US that were hit badly by subprime crisis.

''One of these, a major player in the banking sector, is likely to fold up. However subprime crisis in the US has not affected us as the business volume with the affected companies is very small.

We are comfortable with this crisis as far as BPO business is concerned,'' he said.

UNI