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Indian IT companies are expanding their footprint to new markets


It was a Friday evening in Buda-pest. A new senior manager at Tata Consultancy Services, who was in charge of the company’s operations in Hungary, had called a meeting. Nobody turned up. Surprised and offended, he asked for an explanation, but soon realised that his Hungarian colleagues did nothing wrong. The employees did not attend the meeting because it was scheduled after office hours. Hungarians do not work after office hours.

This would have been an unlikely situation in India, or in the US or the UK, where extended working hours are normal. But with the Indian IT companies expanding their operations to the unfamiliar terrains in Europe, Latin America, Australia and China, they are fast learning to tackle such problems. When TCS began its China operations, it had to set up four centres to accommodate 1,500 employees because people were not willing to relocate.

In India, it would have accommodated all of them in one centre. “Because of the one-child policy, the Chinese youngsters prefer to stay with their parents and it is very difficult to persuade them to relocate. They want a workplace close to their home,” says Pradipta Bagchi, senior general manager, corporate communications, TCS.