Bangalore: At 62, M. Vidyasagar is returning to the university to teach. Having spent almost nine years as executive vice-president of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and head of the company’s advanced technology centre (ATC) in Hyderabad, he is now heading to the University of Dallas in Texas to teach systems biology. He says TCS decided not to extend his term despite an earlier informal agreement that it would do so. This, despite his team of around 75 people creating “valuable assets”, particularly in the field spanning biology and information technology (IT).
Vidyasagar’s story may well be representative of the approach of Indian IT services firms to research and development (R&D). The numbers say part of this story: In 2008-09, TCS spent Rs43.92 crore, or 0.2% of its revenue (Rs27,813 crore) on R&D; Wipro Ltd spent Rs49.2 crore, or 0.19% of its revenue (Rs25,544 crore); Infosys Technologies Ltd spent Rs267 crore, or 1.3% of its revenue (Rs21,693 crore).
Indian IT services companies haven’t come to terms with R&D, says Pankaj Jalote, professor of computer science, who was earlier at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and now heads the Delhi government’s year-old Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology. “Even services companies need to spend at least 2-3% of their revenue on R&D for branding, problem solving, and eventually to get into consulting,” says Jalote, who’s had a two-year stint at Infosys.
A noted academician whose electrical engineering books have educated generations, Vidyasagar came to TCS after heading the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, a Defence Research and Development Organisation lab in Bangalore. Now renamed the Innovation Lab, ATC was founded in 2000 to conduct research in three focus areas—life sciences, security and open source applications.
“I even presented a business plan to TCS showing some of our technologies to be capable of generating $500 million (nearly Rs2,440 crore) in revenue over the next five-six years,” he says, regretting that two of the front-runner products in bio-informatics and digital certification were launched locally, but not marketed globally. TCS neither denied nor confirmed these claims. And it didn’t directly respond to queries on whether it was downsizing its R&D and future focus for ATC.
In an email response, outgoing chief executive S. Ramadorai said: “TCS has very strong global academic alliances and we are very encouraging of employees pursuing their academic interests, be it research or teaching. Going on sabbaticals, pursuing further studies or joining academia is not unusual for the organization, given that we are in the knowledge business. TCS encourages and supports continued dialogue and involvement of such professionals on an ongoing basis.”