A Meeting With French IT Journalist

He is here on a mission : to find out the work culture and secrets of success of Information Technology companies in India. He is also here to find out why European companies are not a part of them as also how much chance they stand to enter the market. Besides the oft repeated reason of linguistic barrier, he also sights one reason why European IT companies are not present in large number in India : the lack of data security.

Valéry Marchive, Editor At Large of LeMagIT, a French trade magazine dedicated to European IT sector is on a study tour of Indian IT companies. he started his sojourn from Pune on Monday when he visited KPIT Cummins at Hinjwadi. After that he also visited CapGemini and Tata Consultancy Services. Valéry also has a meeting scheduled with French Economic Mission in New Delhi. He is currently visiting and studying various companies based on which a full series will appear in his magazine from around September.

When asked what he has found about the companies, Valéry said though he was impressed with the working of the companies and especially its staff, he has yet to form any substantive opinion on the same. He told what he thought was the reason for very less number of French IT companies in India. "People in France are very poor in English. That is one reason why they fail to reach out to Indian companies. As an IT pro, I know many US and British companies have set up their offices in India. Compared to it, French companies have minimal presence. Another reason is that of data security issue. India is still perceived as a potential unsafe country in terms of data security. In France or any other European country, personal data is still perceived as critical and its safety is considered a priority issue."

Express Transaction
Elaborating on this issue, Valéry gave an example of how transaction can be risky in India. The incident took place just a week ago. "When I was scheduling my travel in India, I was booking flights to and from various cities from Jet Airways and Indian Airlines company's official websites. After six of my flights were booked, seventh flight could not be booked because I was told my American Express card has been blocked. When I enquired with the card company, I got a shock when I was told that large transactions of money are being done from my card in a single day. Since the transactions originated in India, American Express thought it safe to block the card, as India is seen as unsafe by the company," he said.

Mixed Bag Pune
Asked about the impressions of Pune, Valéry said, "This city reminds me of a south Italian town two decades ago. It is slow but also it has many companies and lot of young people. Girls here seem pretty, too. But I am amazed at the contrast of the life here. In Mumbai, I visited Goregaon East where I was surprised to find computers even in small huts. Here I asked some people how can they talk of high speed Internet when they do not have electricity itself. The people answered me that for Internet, they are not dependent on computers. They get it on their mobile handsets."

Meanwhile, Valery is blogging his way in India at http://blogs.lemagit.fr/ . He is writing about the India and Indian people as also IT companies.