The rise of the Indian multinational

The center of gravity of world business is shifting, and India's MNCs are ready to carve out a good sized chunk of the pie.
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"It's IBM's nightmare," reported the American business magazine Fortune. In a conference room in Bangalore, consultants and engineers at the software company Wipro were redesigning the 'consumer experience' for a US retail chain to make it state-of-the-art. Reports the magazine, Wipro's general manager for retail solutions was leading a group asking all kinds of detailed questions, "Should sales clerks carry handheld transaction devices or stand at cash registers? Which merchandise should be tracked electronically? How much information needs to be in the database to ensure that discount promotions don't last longer than necessary?"

All this would be the stuff of bad dreams for 'Big Blue' because increasingly its US client companies are turning to Wipro and other software development companies in India for solutions. Indeed, lean and hungry IT companies like Wipro, TCS and Infosys are already invading IBM's turf. These companies are part of the wave of 'multinationalisation' that is sweeping the Indian corporate world.

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Himal Southasian
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