UP govt to rope in Amazon, Wipro, GE at 'One District, One Product' summit

To give a major push to Uttar Pradesh's micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and cottage industries, the Yogi Adityanath government will exchange memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with top companies such as Amazon, Wipro and GE on Friday.

President Ram Nath Kovind will inaugurate the state's flagship 'One District, One Product' summit aimed at showcasing its traditional cottage industries and crafts.

On the occasion, the government will exchange MoUs with e-commerce major Amazon, Wipro, GE Healthcare, Quality Circle of India (QCI) and India's leading bourses -- the BSE and National Stock Exchange (NSE). These entities would help the MSMEs and cottage industries by providing training, branding, marketing and other institutional support.

For example, Amazon will extend marketing support to traditional industries in 9 districts, including Gorakhpur, Agra, Meerut, Varanasi, Kanpur and Aligarh. The company will showcase local products over its online marketplace and create a micro-site dedicated to the ODOP scheme.

Obamacare enrolment begins, but no major gain for Wipro, Cognizant

IT services companies, which were betting on the enrolment for Obamacare to revive faster growth in healthcare services business in the US, may be disappointed as the Trump administration has cut budgets and time for enrolment of the landmark healthcare programme.

Software service providers such as Wipro, Cognizant, Accenture and BPO companies earn a good portion of their revenues by providing services to health insurance companies and the marketplaces for buying health insurance in the US. These companies were awaiting clarity on the proposed change in legislation of Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare and some of them felt the pinch as clients delayed in making decisions for new projects.

While Wipro, which counts close to 15 per cent of its revenues from healthcare services, claimed to have lost $120 million on a run-rate basis in the past 12 months; another IT major Accenture saw business being impacted due to delay in decision making.

As the Open Enrollment has begun for 2018 on November 1, the US administration has shortened the duration to 45 days, unlike earlier years, and not given enough publicity resulting in confusion among citizens.

Global analysts largely say "nothing much has changed" despite efforts by the current administration to replace the healthcare legislation and this could mean no major change in business for IT services companies, both Indian and global, at least this year.
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IT woes: Indian engineers to lose 2 lakh jobs annually, says Head Hunters

Executive search firm Head Hunters India said the job cuts in IT sector will be between 1.75 lakh and 2 lakh annually for next three years due to under-preparedness in adapting to newer technologies.

"Contrary to media reports of 56,000 IT professionals to lose jobs this year, the actual job cuts will be between 1.75 lakh and 2 lakh per year in next three years, due to under- preparedness in adapting to newer technologies," Head Hunters India Founder-Chairman and MD K Lakshmikanth told PTI, analysing a report submitted by McKinsey & Company at the Nasscom India Leadership Forum on February 17.

McKinsey & Company report had said nearly half of the workforce in the IT services firms will be "irrelevant" over the next 3-4 years.

McKinsey India Managing Director Noshir Kaka had also said the bigger challenge ahead for the industry will be to retrain 50-60 per cent of the workforce as there will be a significant shift in technologies. The industry employs 3.9 million people and the majority of them have to be retrained.

ALSO READ: Carnage in Indian IT: Wipro, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Cognizant slash jobs

"So, when we analyse these figures, it is clear that 30 to 40 per cent of the workforce cannot be retrained or re- skilled. So, assume that half of this workforce can continue to work on old skills, then balance will become redundant.

"So, the number of people who will become redundant in the next three years will be about five to six lakhs. This will work out to, on an average, between 1.75 lakh to 2 lakh per year for next three years," Lakshmikanth explained.

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Indian IT eyes crores of rupees in revenue as firms rush to get GST-ready

India's information technology (IT) industry is likely to benefit in a big way as the goods and services tax (GST) roll-out leads to companies spending a few thousand crores of rupees in becoming GST-ready.

While many large businesses, with thousands of partners and customers spread across the country, are spending “significantly” to upgrade their IT infrastructure, the Union government will also invest in setting up the technology infrastructure for GST and its maintenance.

GST is slated to be rolled out from July 1 and will replace the existing tax compliance system for businesses.

“For the GST regime, businesses and organisations will have to upgrade the enterprise resource planning (ERP) and billing systems. It will be a very large and complex transformation and, therefore, it will create a huge opportunity for the IT services companies,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief executive, Greyhound Research.

Gogia believes that it would not only bring in opportunities for technology services, but also for professional services to simplify the taxation and compliance processes for various organisations. In fact, technology services, professional services and necessary hardware upgradation put together, businesses may spend, Gogia added, few thousand crore rupees.

Infosys, India’s second largest IT services firm, bagged a five-year contract worth Rs 1,380 crore in 2015 to implement the GST Network — the nodal agency that will implement the technology and the IT backbone for the unified tax regime, along with the maintenance for it.
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Weekly roundup: Best week in 8-month; Sensex surges a whopping 848 points

Latest News - The market put a stellar show in a holiday-truncated expiry week with benchmark indices rising the most in eighth-month thanks to higher rollovers to February series ahead of Union Budget 2017 as a pre-Budget rally defied the negative results from the companies such as Wipro, Ashok Leyland, HUL and M&M. Positive sentiment in global markets after Dow Jones, Wall Street’s closely-watched index, hit its fresh lifetime high of 20,000-mark, also aided the sentiment. 

During the week ended January 27, the S&P BSE Sensex added 3.1% or 848 points to settle at 26759, while Nifty50 gained 3.5% or 291 points to close the week at 8641. 

Midcap and Smallcap stocks jumped. The BSE Midcap index rose 3%, while the BSE Smallcap index surged 2.8%.

"With signs of FIIs taking interest in Indian equities, and with January derivatives’ expiry witnessing a 5-month high rollover in (Read More)