Look Who's Going for Sarkari Naukri

nce they chased America’s H-1/L-1; now they scramble for Government of India’s L1-T1. Like the proverbial chickens, Indian IT companies are coming home to roost.

In the film Matrix, déjà vu happened when the master program was changed. In six months from now, a similar sensation might grip you in the Indian passport office. “Wasn’t I here a few days ago getting a banker’s cheque made?” you might wonder. You’d be wrong, of course. “The ambience of these kendras will be like that of [an] MNC bank branch, and it will take you only 45 minutes to submit your application,” says Tanmoy Chakrabarty, who heads the global government industry group at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is changing the genetic code of the passport office.

Image: Gireesh GV for Forbes India
VIRTUAL REMEDY: Early beneficiaries of Wipro's transformation project at an ESIC hospital in Rajaji Nagar, Bangalore

And the passport office is also changing how TCS works. Chakrabarty has spent the last 12 months scouting for locations for these modern passport issuing centres, negotiating the leases, getting them fitted, setting up data centres and disaster recovery sites. He is even hiring 1,500 people to help the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to enable speedy disbursal of passports. Basically, TCS functions as a co-owner of this official project.

This is not stuff that Indian software companies do elsewhere in the world. There they are just contractors executing the specific task assigned to them.  Then, why do they do the heavy lifting with the government at home, which can’t pay them the way Fortune 500 companies do?

One reason is ambition. The world over, Indian companies are still seen as artisans, not architects. The Indian government is letting these companies conceive and build big projects from scratch. In the process, Indian companies are learning change management, system integration and innovative pricing. Even things they know well — like estimating costs of a project upfront — are now seen in a new light, because you have to get the pricing right in one attempt with a government project.

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Another reason is that such large government projects aimed at fundamental change are rare. “How many such deals are there in the global markets today?” asks Sivarama Krishnan, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even where such projects are being implemented, Indian companies don’t get to do them in full. They are given only small slices. Only in India, and that too in government projects, do they get that opportunity.

According to industry experts, the government will spend at least $8-10 billion over the next three to five years on a wide range of projects. A few examples are automating tax payments, digitising records, streamlining prison administration and tracking of crime suspects and automating staff services at the Railways.

The terms set by the government make it easier for Indian companies to get these projects rather than foreign ones. This would be poetic justice. For years, multinationals like IBM, Microsoft, Accenture and Capgemini have used their “home-grown” card in the US, UK or France to win government orders and keep Indian companies at the level of second-tier suppliers. In India, the shoe is on the other foot and this fact has not been lost on anyone.

Infosys’ head of India business unit, H.R. Binod, has been given a revenue target of a $1 billion in three years. Wipro Chairman Azim Premji wants 10 percent of his company’s India revenues to come from the government practice. TCS is also looking to rapidly scale its government business. And for once they’re comfortable with being in charge with multinationals playing the role of suppliers.
Take for instance the hospital management project that Wipro is doing for Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC).

ESIC provides healthcare services to more than 40 million people at government-subsidised rates. The current system is cumbersome because the hospitals are not linked and there is considerable paperwork required when employees get transferred. Wipro is now working on a project to create digital medical records. Ranbir Singh, Wipro’s general manager for government and defence segments, compares it to the core banking solutions that have made banking so easy for Indians. In much the same way, the hospital management system will make it possible for covered employees to receive healthcare from any dispensary or hospital in the ESIC system. Wipro will hand over 20 million biometric cards to beneficiaries throughout the country.

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