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, according to the top brass of Infosys Technologies.

Company CEO S Gopalakrishnan, while speaking to news persons after announcing the company's results for the second quarter of the current fiscal, he said inspite the Rupee appreciation the IT companies enjoyed good margins and 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 that the service levels offered by the IT industry in India had no parallels yet.

"The country hired more than six lakh professionals, mainly software engineers, in the IT space in the first six months of this year. The higher income garnered by the countries challenging India's supremacy like Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam was mainly because their currency had also appreciated against the Dollar," he said.

However, Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan had a word of caution saying that lot of foreign funds was 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 that 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 that 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