India brand’ building campaign to be launched  ( June '1,2001, FE)

NASSCOM, the apex industry association of software and information technology companies, on Thursday said it would soon come out with a campaign to promote an ‘India brand’ in IT-enabled services, especially in areas like call centres.

This was announced by a senior Nasscom official while addressing a seminar on ‘India IT Enabled Services, 2001’. Intervening in a discussion on ‘Building the Brand-Business Development in a Developed World’, he said the association is taking up the responsibility of creating an India brand for domestic IT enabled services in view of the various concerns raised by the speakers

. “Nasscom will explore the possibilities of setting up some mechanism for building a strong India brand abroad. The association requests all the companies to provide information about the ‘best practices’ in doing business. As part of the initiative, Nasscom will also set up an Intranet connecting all its members for sharing and providing the information”, he said. Speakers earlier said that there is a slew of problems the Indian companies facing in the international market including the lack of history and credibility.

The political scenario, the poor infrastructure scene etc are playing havoc with industry’s aim to become a major player in the international market, they pointed out. “A major problem plaguing the start-up and small companies is the lack of a strong brand. The question of how they could build a brand of their own is a major issue”, they pointed out. A way to overcome this could be teaming up with large foreign companies or bigger international players who have the wherewithal to develop a brand. However, individual efforts in this direction may not pay off and, therefore, there is a need for associations like Nasscom to intervene, they said.