Tata hopes PM's trip can strengthen business ties

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of India's top IT services firms, is looking forward to making the most of the complementarity of the Chinese and Indian markets.

"We came to build the Chinese market as a hub for our international business," Johnson Lam, CEO of TCS China, said.

The key issue will be making the best of this complementarity, James Zhan, president of Tata Sons in China, said.

Indian IT outsourcing firms such as Tata Consultancy are mainly setting their sights on the US and European markets, while their Chinese counterparts are focused on Japan and South Korea, Lam said.

This, he said, is a field in which the two neighbors should do more to help each other.

"Indian companies can help Chinese ones get deeper involved in the US and European markets, while Chinese companies can offer us more connections with the Japanese and Korean ones," Lam said.

TCS, which set foot in China in 2002, employs 1,100 workers, of which 92 percent are local people.

"We set a vision in 2006 to employ 5,000 employees in the next five years. We are committed to that growth in China," Ravi Kethana, COO of TCS, told China Daily.

The executives hope Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit will create more opportunities for business between the two neighbors, Zhan said.

The visit "reinforces the fact that China and India are moving more and more closer", Kethana said.

Tata Group's total revenue in the last fiscal year was about $29 billion, but only $300 million of this was from the China market, Zhan said.

"When top leaders started to talk to each other, relations improved, and then business opportunities will appear," Zhan said.

They hope Singh's visit will lead to more direct flights between the mainland and India.

Currently, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are the only three cities on the Chinese mainland with direct flights to India.

"I hope the leaders can bring this issue to the table and hopefully open more direct flights between Beijing and Mumbai," Lam said.

(China Daily 01/12/2008 page2)