India is powering Japanese IT’s global push

Japanese IT firms are expanding their base in India looking at the country to build software and apps for their home market as customers globally.

Last month, NEC Corporation, which has been present in India for over 60 years announced that it was setting up NEC Laboratories India (NLI) in Mumbai as part of the global expansion of its solutions for society business.

"By employing highly-skilled IT talent and conducting joint research with academia, customers and partners, NLI will promote the agile development and commercialisation of solutions for India, initially in the field of public transportation and logistics, both of which are NEC's growth drivers in India in the next few years. Takayuki Inaba, Managing Director, NEC Technologies India said.

NEC also plans to deliver new solutions developed by NLI to the surrounding emerging countries in order to propel NEC's global business expansion.

Fujitsu, which runs its biggest global delivery centre in India is now looking at leveraging this to repurpose products from Japan for the rest of the world. Shrikant Vaze, vice-president, global delivery center, Fujitsu Consulting India said,

"We have solutions with deep domain expertise and intellectual property in Japan which need to be repurposed, either contextually or for language, before we take them to other countries. A lot of the knowledge integration for this is happening in India." The key reason, Vaze said, is that India houses the largest bi-lingual workforce for Fujitsu, giving it the advantage of scale.

Nasscom has a dedicated Japan Council which has almost 20 Japanese firms as members. "Japanese IT firms are doing a range of things, from plain vanilla outsourcing to product development and research & development in India," said Gagan Sabharwal, Senior Director, Global Trade Development, Nasscom.

These member companies together have about 75,000 employees in India. NTT DATA houses almost half of its 45,000 employees in India and has acquired local businesses to strengthen its local presence in its two decades here.

"For NTT DATA Services, India is key to its growth due to the vast talent pool available in India. Its current strength of more than 20,000 employees makes it a strong and integral component of NTT DATA Services' global delivery model, providing expert IT services in applications, infrastructureNSE 1.25 %, and business process domains," said Ankur Dasgupta, vice president, India/APJ marketing & communicationsNSE -0.83 %, NTT DATA Service. The India business has been growing in double digits over the last ten years.

It’s not just the traditional IT services firms that are keen on tapping into the advantages India offers. Rakuten, which has a presence across a range of industries has its largest research and technology development center outside of Japan in India.

“Rakuten India plays an integral role in driving our global innovation, developing and deploying next-generation products and services that power Rakuten’s global e-commerce, fintech and media and communications services for our more than 1.2 billion members. We’re looking forward to further growth in the region," Sunil Gopinath, CEO, Rakuten India.

Last month, Nasscom took a delegation of Indian IT firms to three cities in Japan look beyond outsourcing and explore co-creation opportunities between the two countries. It is in the process of finalizing a location for an IT corridor, similar to the two it recently set up in China to further boost this collaboration. Given initiatives like this, the role India plays for Japanese IT firms will only become more strategic over the next few years.