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Journalism of Courage
Indian IT companies with presence in Japan said they have already evacuated employees from susceptible areas and set up dedicated help desks after a massive earthquake struck northern Japan. Firms were not sure how much work will be disrupted any disruption may be temporary as all IT firms operate disaster recovery sites that can shift work to a safer geography.
Among the larger firms,both Infosys Technologies and Wipro have 400 employees in Japan while TCS has roughly 100 people. Wipro has BPO operations in Okinawa,sales and development oragniation in Yokohama and a sales office in Tokyo. Infosys Technologies group head (HR) Nandita Gurjar said all its employes are safe. We are trying to get updates about their families. Owing to connectivity failure we are not able to reach them, she said. Majority of Infosys’ 400 employees are located out of Tokyo,Nagoya and Osaka 300 of the employees are Indians.
Wipro CMO Rajan Kholi said that the firm’s development centre has not been impacted. None of our facilities are in the Northern part of Japan,which has been impacted. All our employees have been evacuated and are safe. Security precautions have been taken. There is no damage to facilities, he said. A spokesperson from TCS said that as per the latest information available with the firm,all its employees in Japan are safe. The firm has 100 employees in Yokohama. Mahindra Satyam noted that the firm has 100 people in Tokyo and it has set up dedicated help desks for families of their employees. The company said it is monitoring the situation 24/7.
Cognizant doesn’t operate a development centre out of Japan but has 98 sales employees all over the country. The firm is in the process of assertaining whether their employees are safe a spokesperson noted the company has reached out to most of the employees.
Some of the smaller firms with a presence in Japan,such as MindTree,also said their employees were safe. Japan is the world’s second largest IT market after the US but has remained elusive to Indian players because of cultural issues.
