Making the distinctions: (From left) Deepak Ghaisas, CEO, i-flex Solutions, with moderator Neel Chatterjee, Regional Head (Corporate Affairs), Standard Chartered Bank, and Ravi Ramu, CFO, Mphasis BFL

The BT crossfire in Bangalore, held at the Taj West End, had the audience all ears. This, after all, was India's software capital, and a city with a reputation of talking zeros and ones even on the phone. The Crossfire debate, though, was in the plain lingua franca of business: English. And the issue was a blunt, 'Have we sold Indian software skills as a commodity, not as a product or brand?' Ranged against each other were not a couple of supergeeks, but two of India's best known financial-wizards-turned-software-honchos: Ravi Ramu, CFO of the services outfit Mphasis BFL Ltd, and Deepak Ghaisas, CEO and CFO of i-flex Solutions, marketer of FlexCube banking packages.

Egging them on to go for each other's throats was moderator Neel Chatterjee of Standard Chartered, despite everyone's hunch that the biggest throatshare that evening would go to Royal Challenge, the debate's sponsor.

Anyhow, Chatterjee threw open the debate with the observation that both the speakers' first names broadly mean 'light', but while Deepak ('lamp') is packaged light, Ravi ('sun') is generic.

Ghaisas pointed out that Neel means 'blue', and hoped that equanimity would prevail, before making his case: That the Indian software sector had commoditised itself by operating on the mantra of 'low, lower and lowest cost'. While pc-making Taiwan and toy-making China have more than a fourth of the world market in their target areas, he said, India had just 3 per cent of the world market for it services and products-for all the chest-thumping. "India is known more as a sweatshop," he said, popping many an illusion, "a bodyshop to get good quality work done, but at cheap rates." This, despite hosting 40 of the 60 companies worldwide with 'SEI CMM Level 5' certification, a consistency tag with which exporters have impressed themselves, but which begets no premium. They, like Raj-time raw material exporters, add very little consumer-end value.

"India is known as a bodyshop to get good quality work done, but at cheap rates" Deepak Ghaisas, CEO, i-flex Solutions

The real game, argued Ghaisas, is intellectual property. Brands. And this sort of asset creation is the actual challenge. "This failure to create brands is why they have to work at $17-22 per hour. Whereas it might have cost $1.3 billion for Microsoft to create the first copy of Windows, all subsequent copies cost it a mere $3. This is the way to go." Alas, it's an age-old failing, he sighed. Had India patented the zero, he elaborated, it could have earned royalty for the entire binary system-and computer age.

IT Is It, IT Is It

In response, Ramu contended that if there's anything which India has successfully branded and been branded for, "it is it, it is it." The very quality of Indian services has created an image-a mark of trust and promise of consistency, which, in itself, is branding, package or no package. Ramu proclaimed the days of "techno coolies" over, with the 'slave' becoming 'sultan', reminiscent of a Delhi dynasty. And he swelled his chest in honour of the industry's pride in its 'Triple B bonanza' of brains, bandwidth and bottomline. "We might have started off with maintenance work, graduated through the Y2K opportunity and taken advantage of the internet revolution. But the very fact that MNCs are rushing here to take advantage of our abilities is a vindication of our Served From India brand." Besides, he added, the services business is less risky than the brand business.

Quoting the NRI entrepreneur Kanwal Rekhi, Ramu asserted that things have changed so much that any knowledge sector industry has to perforce integrate itself with India, or perish. All thanks to the Indian software services sector's power in the world.

"MNCs rushing in to take advantage of our abilities is a vindication of our Served From India brand" Ravi Ramu, CFO, Mphasis BFL

The result: it's not just Jai Jawan and Jai Kisan, but Jai 'Software Engineer' as well. This, he proposed, ought to be made part of the Indian national consciousness.

Coexistence And Competence

So, should India stick with services? An IBM software engineer in the audience wanted to know. Not at all, replied Ghaisas, there's space for both service and product companies, but successful product companies could make better margins. Ramu agreed on the coexistence part, but reiterated that India's real competence lay in services.

Another member of the audience wanted to know the way ahead for the Indian it sector.

The current industry trajectory's fine, said Ramu, expecting exporters to concentrate on the added breadth of services in the years ahead. Ghaisas, on the other hand, urged value-addition-summoning the courage and making a leap for the high-stakes game of marketing shrink-wrapped products. Mere facility with the zeros and ones is not good enough.