IT is no small matter, Mahajan to tell US cos

On the agenda are meetings with CEOs of Hewlett Packard, Compaq, Hughes Network, Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems’ Scott Mc Neilly, Cisco’s John Chambers, Oracle’s Jeff Healy, Yahoo’s Tim Koogle, to name a few.

Also on the itinerary are presentations to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), NASDAQ, venture capital fund managers – in short, anybody who is anybody in the US and has heard or is willing to hear about India’s prowess in the field of IT.

And on the list are visits to various universities and institutions to tap the potential for future partnership in academic exchange. The institutes being visited by Mahajan and his gang are Stanford University, Harvard Business School, Kellogg School of Business and the MIT at Boston.

One cannot help noticing that Carnegie Mellon University, which has an MoU with the Indian government for implementing the Rs 1,407 crore Sankhya Vahini project, is not on the itinerary of the minister. The project has raised the hackles of Opposition parties, besides causing discomfort among a few bureaucrats in Mahajan’s own ministry,

Refuting critics who say that the ‘jumboree’ is just a way to beat the high temperatures in India, officials in the ministry are at pain to point out that the visit would "consolidate" the goodwill created by the recent visit of US President Bill Clinton.

"During 1998-99, 203 of the Fortune 1,000 companies, outsourced their software requirements from India. This brought in Rs 2,030 crore as foreign exchange besides employment opportunities to 40,000 Indians. India’s market share in the field of customised software is 18.5 per cent worldwide," says a top IT ministry official.

"By 2008, 35 per cent of total forex earnings by India are likely to come from software exports, providing employment opportunities to 2.2 million people and a market capitalisation of $ 225 billion. This is not a small opportunity (that India will provide to overseas companies) and this is what we are goint to show the US," said an official who is part of Mahajan’s delegation.