More than six months into the slowdown, India Inc has firmly pressed the cost control button, and this applies to everything from business class travel to lavish parties. No industry exemplifies this change more than the once booming IT industry. Talk to any Indian IT company today and the magic word is 'cost saving'.
Tata Consultancy Services, for example, reduced its operating expenses from 16.37% of its revenues last year to 14.58% of its revenues this year, a decrease of 1.79%. TCS made it work with various cost saving measures it undertook last year. Interestingly during the year some IT companies went to the extent of making it an agenda to save one dollar a day. What paid up for TCS was a reduction in discretionary spending. It saw reduction of costs in software, hardware and material procured for rendering systems integration projects by 0.48% and in recruitments and training by 0.33%. However, it saved the most with reduction in cost of software licences procured by 0.62%. Travel and conveyance was another area where it reduced expenses, by 0.34%. TCS saw its reserves and surplus touching Rs 13,248.39 crore this year, an increase of 22.59% over last year's Rs 10,806.95 crore due to accretion of profits.
The other side of the story is that some of these companies never paid any heed towards costs at all during the boom. Many IT companies extended their limits to retain engineers. Some paid variable components every month instead of yearly or quarterly, while others offered incentives in the form of travel and parties. But it began to change when clients started observing and demanding value for every penny they paid. At one end, margins were hurting, and on the other, increasing expenditures were hurting. IT companies did not only have to then curb lavishness but had to make strategic choices in the way they were hiring and utilising their assets. Like TCS which said it will hire 70% freshers going ahead, a strategy it never tried before but that is paying off well for the company.
It seems the global economic slowdown may perversely come as a blessing in disguise for some companies that are finally beginning to view cost savings as a constant endeavour.
—rachana.khanzode@expressindia.com
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Rajeev Motwani, Google founder's mentor, dead
The celebrated Stanford professor, Rajeev Motwani, known worldwide for mentoring and advising founders of the companies like Google and PayPal, has died in a freak drowning incident.
The news of his death has sent shock waves throughout the Silicon Valley and the tech world globally, as he was known to be the master brain behind several of the key advancement in the world of internet including Google and PayPal.
The 47-year-old Motwani's body was found in the backyard swimming pool of his Palo Alto home in California on Friday. There was no official word about the cause of his death.
Paramedics were summoned when his body was found in the pool.
Describing Motwani as his friend and teacher, Google founder Sergey Brin wrote on his blog: "Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it."
As Google emerged from Stanford, Brin wrote: "Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched."
A student of the prestigious St Coloumba's School in New Delhi, Motwani was born in Jammu and Kashmir on March 26, 1962. After earning his Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur in 1983, he came to the US to get his PhD in Computer Science from University of Berkeley in 1988. Soon thereafter he joined Stanford.
Ron Conway, a long time friend of Motwani, told a group of techies at a San Francisco event that he influenced hundreds of entrepreneurs and students, and never refused a meeting.
"For those of you who didn't know Rajeev, you might get the impression that he was your typical Silicon Valley insider -- loud, brash, full of bravado."
"Rajeev was soft spoken and gentle. He was self-confident but didn't feel the need to prove anything. He didn't speak to hear his own voice. And he didn't need to be the centre of attention.
Rajeev just wanted to be helpful. And he was. To so many of us," wrote Dave Hornik of August Capital, where Motwani regularly attended Monday meetings.
As founder of the Mining Data at Stanford Project (MIDAS) he helped developing innovative data and management concepts.
He was well known for his research in theoretical computer science, Motwani was a winner of the Godel Prize in 2001 for his work on the PCP theorem and its applications to hardness of approximation.
Motwani was one of the co-authors of an influential early paper on the PageRank algorithm, which became the basis for Google's search techniques. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Terry WinogradHe.
He wrote two books -- Randomized Algorithms and an undergraduate textbook published in 2001.
"Success never came in the way of Rajeev's quest for knowledge and innate desire to help others. There wasn't a startup he didn't love. Like his chosen specialization of search, Rajeev was searching for the unknown. He was still active as a professor and was teaching a couple of classes as recently as the last semester," wrote his close friend Om Malik on his blog.
"He helped us improve our algorithms and ideas and introduced us to Ron Conway and to other folks which led to the acquisition of our startup. I ran into him several times since and he was always both kind and brilliant. I had hoped to work with him on a future project. While that's not to be, I imagine dozens of other computer scientists-turned-entrepreneurs can tell the same story," wrote Dan Gould, co-founder of Newroo.
The news of his death has sent shock waves throughout the Silicon Valley and the tech world globally, as he was known to be the master brain behind several of the key advancement in the world of internet including Google and PayPal.
The 47-year-old Motwani's body was found in the backyard swimming pool of his Palo Alto home in California on Friday. There was no official word about the cause of his death.
Paramedics were summoned when his body was found in the pool.
Describing Motwani as his friend and teacher, Google founder Sergey Brin wrote on his blog: "Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it."
As Google emerged from Stanford, Brin wrote: "Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched."
A student of the prestigious St Coloumba's School in New Delhi, Motwani was born in Jammu and Kashmir on March 26, 1962. After earning his Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur in 1983, he came to the US to get his PhD in Computer Science from University of Berkeley in 1988. Soon thereafter he joined Stanford.
Ron Conway, a long time friend of Motwani, told a group of techies at a San Francisco event that he influenced hundreds of entrepreneurs and students, and never refused a meeting.
"For those of you who didn't know Rajeev, you might get the impression that he was your typical Silicon Valley insider -- loud, brash, full of bravado."
"Rajeev was soft spoken and gentle. He was self-confident but didn't feel the need to prove anything. He didn't speak to hear his own voice. And he didn't need to be the centre of attention.
Rajeev just wanted to be helpful. And he was. To so many of us," wrote Dave Hornik of August Capital, where Motwani regularly attended Monday meetings.
As founder of the Mining Data at Stanford Project (MIDAS) he helped developing innovative data and management concepts.
He was well known for his research in theoretical computer science, Motwani was a winner of the Godel Prize in 2001 for his work on the PCP theorem and its applications to hardness of approximation.
Motwani was one of the co-authors of an influential early paper on the PageRank algorithm, which became the basis for Google's search techniques. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Terry WinogradHe.
He wrote two books -- Randomized Algorithms and an undergraduate textbook published in 2001.
"Success never came in the way of Rajeev's quest for knowledge and innate desire to help others. There wasn't a startup he didn't love. Like his chosen specialization of search, Rajeev was searching for the unknown. He was still active as a professor and was teaching a couple of classes as recently as the last semester," wrote his close friend Om Malik on his blog.
"He helped us improve our algorithms and ideas and introduced us to Ron Conway and to other folks which led to the acquisition of our startup. I ran into him several times since and he was always both kind and brilliant. I had hoped to work with him on a future project. While that's not to be, I imagine dozens of other computer scientists-turned-entrepreneurs can tell the same story," wrote Dan Gould, co-founder of Newroo.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Delhi Government to phase out Blueline buses from July
New Delhi, June 4 (ANI): Ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the Delhi Government has decided to start phasing out of Blueline buses from July onwards by replacing them with modern buses over a period of next five months.
The Shiela Dikshit-led Delhi Government had announced last year that it would phase out the buses since witnessing a big public outcry over Blueline buses after being blamed to be involved in a number of road accidents involving several deaths.
Arvinder Singh Lovely, Delhi's Transport Minister has told media that the phase out of Blueline buses would start from July onwards and take at least five months to conclude the entire process. Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) would have a fleet of around 5,000 modern buses during the Commonwealth Games.
The government wants to put in place a modern bus fleet ahead of the forthcoming games in the city.
At present, nearly 2,200 Blue line buses are plying on the city's roads. Apart from the existing low floor buses, the city will get another lot of 2,500 vehicles in next couple of months.
The Cabinet has shown 'green signal' to Delhi Transport Corporation to procure 1,000 semi-low floor buses to augment the fleet of modern buses in the national capital. (ANI)
The Shiela Dikshit-led Delhi Government had announced last year that it would phase out the buses since witnessing a big public outcry over Blueline buses after being blamed to be involved in a number of road accidents involving several deaths.
Arvinder Singh Lovely, Delhi's Transport Minister has told media that the phase out of Blueline buses would start from July onwards and take at least five months to conclude the entire process. Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) would have a fleet of around 5,000 modern buses during the Commonwealth Games.
The government wants to put in place a modern bus fleet ahead of the forthcoming games in the city.
At present, nearly 2,200 Blue line buses are plying on the city's roads. Apart from the existing low floor buses, the city will get another lot of 2,500 vehicles in next couple of months.
The Cabinet has shown 'green signal' to Delhi Transport Corporation to procure 1,000 semi-low floor buses to augment the fleet of modern buses in the national capital. (ANI)
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