India best for IT business, say Israeli firms

Underlining the advantages of outsourcing to India, executives of global hi-tech firms in Israel have said the country is the most preferred destination for doing business in the IT sector.

"India has everything that a multinational needs. It is a young country, has creative minds and a huge market with almost 27 cities with more than a million population," chairman of AON Global, Simon Wasserman, said at an 'India conference on outsourcing' aimed at familiarising Israeli businesses with economic operations in India.

He said India will overtake Japan in GDP in 2030 and become the biggest economy in the world in 2050.

Atsmon Group Ltd, an Israeli compensations and benefits consultancy, organised the conference in which senior executives from Intel, AON Global, BMC and Comverse made presentations touching upon various aspects of doing business with India from their personal experiences.

Representatives of some 60 Israeli companies attended the conference.

"We have realised that opening operations in India is becoming more and more relevant during our interaction with our clients. The response to the conference was overwhelming," CEO of Atsmon, Tali Atsmon, said.

Indian Ambassador to Israel Arun Kumar Singh, who inaugurated the conference, touched upon at length the growing IT sector in India and the initiatives taken by the government to catalyse the growth.

Ramo Yosef, Regional compensation and benefit manager of BMC, a software company with global presence, said that his company started its India operation in Pune in 2001 with only 45 people but now employs 798, bringing out the favourable conditions prevailing there.

Comverse vice president for strategic outsourcing, Ofer Glanz, in his presentation said India has several competitive advantages over China as a destination for outsourcing.

There is abundance of skill, engineers with experience in telecom, the economy has financial stability and there is a process maturity in India, Glanz said.