Thought Garage

Latest news reports confirm that Infosys has reached a settlement to pay $34 million in fines for visa fraud, for bringing in developers on B1 visas to work and other irregularities in keeping accurate I-9s.

Its rather intriguing but totally reasonable critique of the euphoria of Jan Lokpal bill. Glad not all people are simply carried away with emotions. He did not answer the question on the big ticket corruption as much convincingly as he did for the retail aspects, probably his work involved more of the later than the former. And strikingly, the JanLokpal addresses the big ticket corruption to a large extent. By no means, I am against the Jan Lokpal bill, but I don't believe in those wild fantasies that it can somehow magically eradicate corruption. An independent body with powers is the need of the hour, but setting up a whole new body without checks and balances is set for disaster. Why not make some of our existing bodies that are setup to fight against corruption independent. After all, even the Lokpal is supposed to execute the law through these bodies.  But none of those above objections call for dissing the whole movement. Its rather a great start to go...

There was so much pressure on Indian IT Services firms for a long time to enter product space and they refused and insisted that Services is the key. After all, their strength and  innovation is in creating market driven and efficient service delivery models.  They not only succeeded with flying colors in delivering services, they influenced the entire world to turn to services. So in more than one way, there were right on about services.  Some key milestones that indicate the strong inclination towards services just the way Indian IT Services headed all along: IBM once synonymous with PC sells its iconic PC Business and rebrand itself as IT services (or emphatically Smart Solutions for the planet) HP buys EDS and says it is critical to enter Services business as profits drop in all other directions. Dell buys Perot Systems, seen as following HP. Xerox , the iconic innovator buys Affiliated Computer Services, citing exactly the same reason of survi...

Its pretty unusual for many otherwise very successful Indians to write books, about anything. Be it sharing what they have mastered or what they have thought about, leave alone preaching something. I was thrilled to see Kishore Biyani unveiling ‘ It Happened in India ’ a couple of years ago.  And I recently came to know about Nandan Nilekani touring in USA promoting his own book, ‘Imagining India’. It is another of those aha moment to cherish.  I was surprised the book cover appears different for the version that will be sold in India vs. the one that will be sold in US. The website of the book, ImaginingIndia displays the cover page (left) with seemingly thoughtful Nilekani on the cover. Where as the one I saw on Amazon has cover page (right) displaying a busy train station. Did Nilekani think, it would be embarrassing for foreigners if he had put his own face on the cover? Just like Infosys thought it would be embarrassing to foreign nationals to sing our National ...

There is a silver lining to the economic turbulence in Indian markets. Net effect of the economic turbulence is that top 10 firms in fact notched up their market valuations. Breaking its six-week long losing trend, country's top 10 club added over Rs. 20,000 crores to the combined market valuation in the past week, even as Reliance Industries and Infosys suffered losses. The top 10 companies together gained Rs. 23,273 crores in market cap last week, while country's most valued firm Reliance Industries alone lost Rs. 24,063 crores from its valuation. Also IT bellwether Infosys' valuation declined to Rs. 6,371 crores in the past week. At the end of Friday's trade, the total market value of the 10 most valued firms, comprising six from public sector and four private sector entities, stood at Rs. 10,15,150 crores, up from Rs. 9,91,877 crores a week ago. ... As per the elite list of top 10 firms, RIL is followed by ONGC (Rs. 1,58,619 crores), NTPC (Rs. 1...

Top 25 Consumers of H1B in 2007 (that account to almost 20,000 Visas) now have to speak up about how they use H1B applicants.  Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley have sent letters to these companies seeking answers to an array of questions that will reveal how these companies use H1B petitions. Click here to view a copy of the letter . I guess, this is particularly relevant in the wake of two new bills submitted to increase the numerical limitation on H1Bs. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter  today to the top 25 recipients of approved H-1B visa petitions in 2007, seeking detailed information on how each firm uses the visa program. These firms were responsible for nearly 20,000 of the available H-1B visas last year. Infosys Technologies Ltd., Wipro Limited, Satyam Computer Services Ltd., Cognizant Tech Solutions, Microsoft Corporation, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Pat...