November 7: India's software engineers have made waves worldwide, from America's Silicon Valley to Asean's Cyber city-state. But India itself has never been perceived as a threat so far in this part of the world, but rather as a pool of talent from which the region's information technology (IT) industry can draw.

That perception seems now set to change. According to a recent survey conducted by the Singapore Federation of the Computer Industry (SFCI), India now poses the greatest competitive threat to Singapore software firms in the global market place outside the US.

The survey, which was wrapped up a month ago, polled 76 IT firms based in Singapore, 50 per cent of them being Singapore firms and the rest multinationals.

Forty per cent (the largest segment) of the respondents felt that the biggest competitive threat to Singapore came from India, because of its expertise in the areas of systems software, application software, consultancy and services.

According to SFCI chairman William Liu, Indian software houses have been offering stiff competition to Singapore software firms to contract jobs from multinationals.

However, he was not threatened by this trend. Rather, he viewed it as an ``opportunity'' for Singapore. After all, as he put it, ``It's not a zero sum game." Singapore software houses were working with are working with their counterparts in India to tap Indian software expertise.

SFCI council member, Darke Sani, too highlighted the fact that India had a big pool of low-cost software talent that can produce software products and services cheaply.

Indeed, the threat perception could well be transformed into a mutually-enriching synergy. This was the suggestion mooted last year during the first ever business seminar on the Indian IT industry to be held in the Singapore in tandem with Comdex Asia 96. As many as 34 Indian software companies and about 30 of their counterparts from Singapore participated, including software titans such as Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Unisys, Wipro, Infosys Technologies, Aptech, and Mastek, among others. The realisation that the software development potential of India had been underestimated was what provoked National Computer Board of Singapore and India's Nasscom to embark on this initiative. On that occasion, Nasscom chief Dewang Mehta had pointed out that for both countries, it would be the perfect opportunity to translate the concept of ``smartsourcing'' into practice. As he put it, ``The advantage for Singapore in outsourcing its IT operations to India is that we can provide a vast reservoir of skilled, quality-conscious and cost-effective manpower. For India, Singapore offers something more than a mere market.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.