Custom Software Development

We often underestimate the innovative prowess of the domestic players and have so far been looking for technological innovations from the West, rues Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman & CEO, HCL Infosystems. He is glad, however, that with the launch of innovative products like Tata Nano, the common perception is slowly but surely changing.

To the league of recent innovation closer home, Ajai likes to add the HCL MiLeap range of Leaptops. “With its ultra small form factor, offering mobile computing at an unbeaten price of Rs 13,990, MiLeap is set to create a new product segment in our country,” he mentions confidently, during the course of an e-mail interaction with Business Line.

“Other innovations in the past include our products like the sub-10K PC which broke the price barriers in the market and set the industry trend of affordable computing among the desktop category,” says Ajai. “The computer that runs on a car battery, the four in one computer, the point of sale product and the ‘Data Centre’ in a box were all developed at our R&D centre.”

Excerpts from the interview.

How do you keep the innovative spirit alive in the organisation?

HCL is known as ‘entrepreneurial incubator’ having a three-decade long history of innovations and inventions, so that the term ‘intrapreneur’ best describes an HCL employee.

We have various formal and informal forums to encourage the innovative spirit within HCL. A key differentiator for HCL is the bottom up communication channel that form an essential part of the formulation of various organisational decisions and strategies. These channels include employee suggestion programs through various e-forums, People advisory Teams, regular employee opinion survey etc.

We also have a dedicated portal towards innovation - Innovate@hcl - that provides every employee the platform to implement any ideas they may have concerning small innovations in own work environment to affecting changes in the strategy of the company.

Innovate@hcl is continually promoted through communication campaigns, regular employee contests, training workshops for cross-functional teams, and innovative branded goods.

Does attrition worry you more than the employability issue? Any antidotes?

Retention is becoming important in today’s corporate world especially in IT/ITeS sector; quick shifts are a steady trend. With the increase in opportunities available in the IT industry, it is a challenge ‘to Recruit the Best, Retain the Best and Reward the Best.’

When organisations fail to recruit and reward the best is when retention becomes a problem.

The strength of our training and development function has ensured that employability has never been a serious concern within HCL. We take pride in recruiting a large number of people from campus and grooming them into leaders, starting with a rigorous induction to enable continuous individual development.

Overall we have been successful in keeping attrition rates below industry averages, even as attrition has seen a sharp rise within the industry in the last few years. This is really a strong testimony to the culture of ‘entrepreneurship’ where our people do not view themselves as just ‘employees’ but are encouraged to take ownership through a boundary-less environment of empowerment.

Through our various employee engagement initiatives we continue to build a strong relationship between each manager and employee, for creating an ideal work environment.

Today, employees are looking for growth and challenges. At HCL we offer that to every employee: the opportunity to grow continually. The company has a core philosophy to offer an environment that encourages an employee to look at HCL as a career and not just another job.

Once a person joins HCL it’s no longer just a job but he becomes part of the HCL family. Today, 80 per cent of our top management are people who joined HCL straight from campus as trainees or in early phase of their careers.

The HCL DNA of ‘Pride - Passion - People – Performance’ has been our keystone in providing us with the edge to overcome challenges and charter our own growth plans.

What were the design challenges that you had to confront and overcome in making MiLeap possible?

MiLeap has been conceptualised a product that will create a new category of product, namely ‘the ultraportable that offers true Internet experience on the move’. The challenge was to offer PC functionality that gives a true Internet experience in such an efficient and compact form factor.

Next was to engineer a product that met the India-specific thermal, dust and durability requirements, as the product is meant to be used in a non-AC, non-dustproof environment.

One other challenge was to engineer it to offer connectivity on the move. And last but not the least challenge was to engineer a product that will hit the market at a price point of Rs 13990. This affordable product sits between a laptop and a PDA, opening up immense new user possibilities to society.

Is information technology aggravating the inequalities within the country, or can it also work towards a more inclusive society?

In fact, IT is the next big equaliser in society after the last one, which is education. Today IT, more than anything else, is empowering the have-nots and is setting up the foundation on which a whole generation will empower themselves.

Access to education and information, and distance learning are examples of how IT is benefiting the society. Access to markets is transforming lives of farmers and artisans.

Take for example the transparency and efficiency of the computerised railway ticket bookings, which have done away with an era of spending hours waiting in queue just get a ticket, getting caught in the clutches of middlemen; the worst exploited then were the poor.

Even small businesses and professionals are exploiting IT to grow their business. These are just some of the examples of how IT is making a difference.

Yes, while a lot has been achieved, there is a lot more that should be done. Adoption of IT will make a society more inclusive.

Where do you see growth coming from, in the realm of IT products? And, in IT services?

 

The Indian information technology sector continues to be one of the sunshine sectors of the Indian economy. With a growth figure of 30.7 per cent in 2006-07, the sector has left its global counterpart, which grew at 10 per cent, way behind.

India has emerged as the fastest growing IT hub in the world. Its growth is dominated by IT software and services such as custom application development and maintenance (CADM), system integration, IT consulting, application management, infrastructure management services, software testing, service-oriented architecture and Web services.

As far as HCL is concerned, it is among the leading players in all the segments comprising the domestic IT products, solutions and related services, which include PCs, servers, office automation, networking products, imaging, broadcasting, communication, telecom, system integration, digital lifestyle solutions and peripherals.

What are the geographies and verticals that HCL is focusing on?

HCL Infosystems, with its focus on the Indian market, has been recognised as one of the prime movers of IT adoption in our country. HCL has invested in an extensive nation-wide service and support network, which reaches even to remote corners of the nation. It has a strong direct support force of over 5,000+ members operational at 1,200+ locations across the country. This force addresses the issue of physical presence in a majority of towns and cities over and above its state-of-art remote support capability.

HCL, the largest selling brand of computers into the commercial enterprise space, is a rapidly growing player in the laptop space. It enjoys a great credibility and partnership with many leading international electronic and ICT brands for sales and support into the Indian market.

Going forward, one of the important business verticals for HCL will be the system integration business. With convergence being the core of the 24×7 infrastructure that businesses and government are setting up, system integration will be a core focus area for the company.