For Indian IT, President Trump may not be as bad as candidate Donald

Bengaluru: As with many things Trump, the road ahead for

Indian IT

in the new US dispensation looks uncertain. Some think he’ll be good. Some feel he’s trouble. But most feel he is unlikely to implement some of his more extreme anti-outsourcing promises during the campaign.

IT industry body Nasscom’s president R Chandrashekhar reflected the sentiment of many when he said ‘candidate Trump’ must be distinguished from ‘President Trump’. “On the campaign trail, statements are not based on calculated assessments, on what is possible or what the impact will be. You could say you will eliminate H-1B visas, build a wall. But practically, you have to see what you can do to boost the economy, create jobs,” he said.

He said Indian IT was a key enabler of productivity increases in corporate America and Trump would understand that. “There’s no need for alarm at this stage,” he said. The US accounts for 50-60% of the revenues of Indian IT companies.

Creating jobs in America and reducing

immigration

was a big focus of Trump during the campaign. He slammed outsourcing. He criticized IBM for allegedly firing around 500 people working at Minneapolis and transferring those jobs to India. He threatened to bar such companies from moving jobs from America and warned of levying a 35% tax on products made overseas by such companies. He was vocal about ending the “abuse” of the H-1B visa, a popular visa used by Indian IT companies to transfer employees to work out of their US offices. He was generally critical of immigration, but in some speeches, he welcomed high-skilled immigration and specially acknowledged Silicon Valley’s need for such immigration.

Wipro vice-chairman T K Kurien noted that Trump is a businessman and said he would understand the concept of compromise. “…to that extent I think he is neutral at worse and positive at best,” he said. Kurien also noted that Trump’s political base was basically Middle America, and there is very little technology in Middle America, unlike in the west and east coasts. He said Trump’s focus would be to make sure that these (non-tech) middle class jobs wouldn’t go away from America.

Keshav Murugesh, group CEO of BPO company WNS Global Services, noted that Trump had himself leveraged the global model in his business and that will augur well for the IT/BPO industry. “The reality is India brings a great advantage to the IT and BPM industry and I’m pretty certain that irrespective of the political rhetoric, in the longer term, he will allow CEOs of companies in the US to take decisions around their businesses and their shareholders,” he said.

Vivek Wadhwa, a Fellow at the Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance in Stanford University, feels Trump will be far more pro-business than anyone. “The impact to Indian IT will be from the economy more than policy. If Trump moderates himself and doesn’t cause trade wars, Indian IT should not be impacted too much,” he said.

Research firm Gartner sounded the most pessimistic. It said the Indian IT sector, which has slowed down significantly in recent months, will now have to brace for further troubled times. The Trump administration’s protectionist views will “have a further dampening impact on growth prospects, if the views were to crystalise into some serious policy implementations,” it said.


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