"Brain gain"

Foreign techies land on Indian shores

MUMBAI: For Daven Dunlea, 25, India is still associated with tigers, as much as Mexico conjures up a tequila . But when it came to his internship at Hyderabad-based Satyam Computers , the Irish-born Dunlea didn’t bat an eyelid. Twenty six-year old Polish HR post graduate, Maciej Wituszynski,gave up opportunities to work in France, Brazil and Turkey for a year’s internship at TCS’s Mumbai office. Says Wituszynski, “I would like to stay back here for a career.’’

It’s happening. After years of brain drain to western nations, India is beginning to see a new phenomenon: brain gain. In the last year, TCS has recruited 80 students of foreign origin from 21 countries, while Satyam has more than 120 interns of 22 nationalities. Wipro and Infosys together have an equal number of recruits who may end up being absorbed.

Says TCS global head (human resources) S Padmanabhan, “For IT students across the world, having an India experience on their CVs has become an important competence.’’ Says Nascomm’s president Kiran Karnik, “India’s success in IT is bringing in the world’s talent, just like education attracted students to America.’’

Dunlea, a masters degree holder in strategic management from the Dublin Institute of Technology, says students rank India’s IT capability very highly. Though his friends laughed at his decision to come to Hyderabad, he says that in the coming years they will start looking at India more seriously.

The reasons are not difficult to fathom. As IT companies in America and Europe move their work to cheaper destinations like Asia and eastern Europe, they have fewer opportunities for students from colleges in their own countries.

Accenture , the global consultancy firm, now has fewer recruits from Ireland than from countries like Romania and Slovakia. Says Wituszyski, who passed out from the Polish Technical University in 2004, “I came to India for two reasons.

Its IT industry is very visible in our country and I thought experiencing globalisation in a different culture will be important in future.’’ Says Malaysian Siti Ramlah, 22, who has now taken up full employment at Satyam Computers after a year’s internship, “In our college, we think India’s IT skills are next only to the US.’’

The companies too see many advantages in hiring interns from different countries. Indian software companies are slowly establishing offices in many countries across the world. TCS has operations in most of Europe and in many Southeast Asian countries. It also often have to work in branch offices of American customers while implementing their software projects.

Says Satyam Computers senior vice president (human resources) T Hari, “We expect interns to seed the cross-cultural experience across the organisation. This began as an experiment , but we are scaling up by October to 500 interns.’’

The Economic Times, February 15, 2006