Message from CEO

Message from Dr. Nirmal Jain - CEO, Tata Infotech

Dr. Jain, in his tenure as CEO from 1996 onwards has been instrumental in positioning Tata Infotech as the leading Systems Integration Company.

He has been responsible for restructuring the organization to bring more internal synergy and focus on 4 divisions - Systems Integration, Hardware Manufacturing, Education, and Products.

Initiated a TQM movement in TIL, based on Tata Groups, Tata Business Excellence Model (based on Malcolm Baldridge Award criteria).

He extended Indian and overseas market base for TIL and revised HR policies to be more people focused. He has initiated a number of new partnerships with leading IT companies for providing Total Solutions to customers, e.g., SUN, IBM, Compaq, CISCO, Oracle, Microsoft and others.

Message from CEO

Unprecedented turmoil in the Information Technology sector in the United States of America has contributed to an over all slowdown of the US economy. This has had a ripple effect on the economies of several countries. The impact on India has been significant due to the fact that the Indian IT service business is heavily dependent on the US.

To continue to grow at a rapid pace, the Indian It services sector has to spread its base to other developed markets in Europe, UK and Japan. Cultivating and adapting to these markets will be a challenge.

Therefore, Indian IT service companies need to move up the value chain by investing in and developing domain expertise so that they can understand their customers' business and integrate better into their customers' strategic direction. Indian IT companies need to bring about clearer differentiation, either through designing their own products, developing their own IPR, integrating newer technologies faster into their services, or offering customers total services such as Systems Integration.

Tata Infotech has anticipated some of these changes and has proactively invested in technology, and the integration of new technologies into its service offerings. We have also invested considerable effort in developing our own products and IPR. The Company has launched agentF, a forms portal; tax Mantra, a component based product for the US market; and has set up Exegenix Research in Canada to commercialise its own IPR in the XML area. This year, we have further developed our high end skills and experience in executing Systems Integration projects for customers. In order to take this expertise overseas, the company has entered into an agreement with consilience Technologies (Pty) Ltd, South Africa, to market its SI capabilities in Africa.

In the year 2000 - 01, Tata Infotech took a number of actions to address the low growth and low profitability of the Company in the year 1999 - 2000. The Company, as our Chairman indicated, has concentrated on growth in the international market. Business in the overseas market has thus expanded through a major marketing effort, resulting in the international revenue growing by 50%. The marketing effort established a customer base of 145 companies, which included customers for our technology capabilities such as speech recognition, wireless computing, embedded systems, data warehousing and compiler technology.

In India, the domestic has been shifting from specific hardware or software solutions, towards total solutions. This is good for our Company, as total solutions and SI have traditionally been our strong points. The company has executed a number of SI solutions for large Government, Public sector and Private Sector organizations.

The Education business completed its restructuring process and has begun to pursue its goal to emphasise on content development and management, and closer partnerships for the delivery of education. The Education Services Division has successfully expanded into the international market and experts to continue this course of activity in the years to come.

Tata Infotech has been successfully manufacturing systems and subsystems for Unisys. It has now started its diversification process to address other customers, and is offering design services as well as manufactured products, which will be marketed in India.

One of our company's major strengths is, and has been its ability to deliver software and services. This has been possible due to our strong emphasis on quality, training and development of our consultants, customer orientation and teamwork. In this Annual Report, we are happy to bring to you some examples of this capability.