China biggest threat to Indian IT: HCL chief

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, the number five Indian IT services firm, said today that China could emerge as the biggest threat to India's dominance as the number one supplier of IT services.

Nayar was speaking at annual company event to employees. He said "China is the biggest threat to Indian IT industry.'' Dismissing objections to China's midget- sized companies as compared to HCL, Nayar said the annual increase in employee wages in India would soon see China overtake India as the source of the cheapest IT engineers in the world.

Nayar says that by 2015 China will be the default destination for low cost IT workforce.

According to Nayar in another five years, IT would be treated as a utility, offered by vendors who charge per transaction irrespective of how many people and effort are deployed on a project.

He added that if the right technology and tools are used, the amount of work being done currently by 100 people could be done by 20.

"In five years, we would have dramatically changed to become a utility," he said. He said the if HCL employees do not cut costs deploying tools and machines, "someone else will."