IT firms in Gujarat show growth even in meltdown

From four employees in the first week of October,Kumar’s small firm has now grown to its present employee strength of 12.

While almost every industry is either stagnating or growing at a snail’s pace,IT Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are growing at a healthy rate in Gujarat.

In the last weekend of June,Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association (GESIA) organised a job fair. Thirteen companies and over 7,000 people participated and a number of Gujarat-based SMEs recruited “close to 400” applicants directly,according to Nariv Shah,president of GESIA.

“Some companies could recruit on-the-spot because they have BPO and other back-office jobs to offer,and all they need to know is whether an applicant has strong language skills,which can be done on the spot,” he said.

“Other companies have to screen the applicants first,but overall,we are expecting them to recruit about 3,000 new employees in the next six months,” Shah added.

Ruchira Patel,E-Tech’s assistant recruitment leader,said that her company had recruited 40 new employees on the spot at the job-fair,and 46 have been kept on hold – “which we will take onboard within this month”.

She has plans to recruit at least 100 new employees for the company’s voice and non-voice departments of the US-based BPO unit.

Another medium IT company,HiTech,has short-listed about 40 applicants,almost half of them for its call-centre units.

Shah said there were a number of reasons for this surge in IT SMEs.

“With big companies in the West cutting back operations due to the meltdown,the smaller ones started venturing. With most major companies based in Bangalore,Hyderabad and Pune,they started looking at other places like Gujarat,” he said.

Naresh Dhingra,human resources director at Hi Tech,added: “Companies from the US,the UK and Australia from whom we have been getting a number of projects in the last three months,are mainly medium-sized,and not Fortune 500 companies.”

The other reason for the surge is the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar,according to Shah.

He said while the value of a dollar was less than Rs 40 last year,it has hit Rs 52 now,which means that contracts that had been worth,for example,300 dollars a year ago,have now gained about 25 per cent in value.

Shah also said that electricity supply,at least in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar,is steady,and companies do not have to invest in expensive generators.

“Besides everything else,with so many new recruits,the myth that the state doesn’t have manpower – both qualitative and quantitative – has been broken,” Shah added.