Temperamental jobs: The top IT firms are hiring 1 lakh employees this year. Please, now is that a newsworthy statement anymore! TCS is adding another 12,000 to its 55,000 staff strength; Infosys added 8,026 people in the last quarter and planning to take 14,000 more. Wipro, which added 8,000 in the first half of 2005, is hiring 16,000 this year.  But then someone else aspires to beat IT biggies in the number game.

Teamlease, the biggest player in the temporary staffing business, is planning to double its present number of 29,000. Flexi-staffing, a concept that arrived a bit late in the Indian service industry, is making waves in the media, since the time a Swiss firm Adecco, took over People-one Consulting. It has a temp-staff strength of 17,000, while Mafoi comes in third at 14,000 and next comes Manpower (5,000) and Kelly Services (2,000).

While one wonders how these novices are planning to upstage the IT biggies in sheer numbers, another interesting angle has come up. Though a flexi-staffer is on the permanent rolls of the recruiting firm, he/she is not kept on the assignment for more than 182 days. That's because of our beloved Contract Labour Act which entitles a flexi-staffer to demand a permanent job. That's a bit dicey, what if the host company doesn't want to absorb the person! Though the recruiting firm takes care of the employee's statutory benefits, there would be an issue if it is unable to find a suitable assignment after the present one is over. Hope we won't have a temp-staff trade union to take care of these new economy orphans!

No more Small & Mediocre!

"95% of industrial units, 40% of manufactured output, 60% of exported goods, 3+ million companies, 17+ million employees... the backbone of the country's economy", says an ICICI bank advt for its ‘Emerging India' awards. Which sector are they talking about... It's surely not one sector, but it is a tiny invisible segment of every industrial sector. 

SMEs or the SSIs of the yesteryear have made a tremendous come back in the past two years. Small and Medium Enterprises have surpassed the industrial growth index across all sectors, despite the daunting hurdles. These are those tiny units of bustling activity whose original investment in plant and machinery should not exceed Rs.1crore, as per RBI guidelines. I clearly remember the early days of liberalisation when every economist in the country was forecasting a bleak future for SMEs due to the imminent MNC invasion.

But then how come these tiny Davids survived while the Goliaths are still trying to find their feet in a slippery economy like India... Gone are those days when SME entrepreneurs had to roam pillar to post to get their loans approved. Now every bank has a dedicated unit to service this sector and to woo them with attractive loans. In contrast to the negligence of other financial institutions, SIDBI has played a pivotal role in developing the SME sector since 1990s. Taking its work forward, SIDBI has set up SME Rating Agency of India Limited (SMERA), a joint initiative along with Dun & Bradstreet Information Services India and Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd. SMERA is the country's first rating agency focussing providing ratings that are comprehensive, transparent and reliable and facilitate easier flow of credit from the banking sector to SMEs. Atlast ‘India is Shining' for people and companies outside the confines of BSE Sensex!

Next round of Media war: The media battle royale is back again; another set of new TV news channels and FM radio channels are about to hit the Indian airwaves. But didn't we see a flurry of new news and business channel launches last year... Why do we need another bunch of channels while our cable operators don't have space for more than a 100! And do we have to pay for so many news channels too...

Heard that the Times Group and Reuters have launched their Times Now TV with the renowned news analyst, Arnab Goswami at the helm. Another NDTV stalwart, Rajdeep Sardesai is heading the other recent launch CNN-IBN channel. TV Today Network is back in the news after the launch of its Hindi news channel Tez, second sibling to Aaj Tak. The fourth channel, ‘TV Today Business' which is expected to be a metro-centric channel, is targeting a December or early January 2006 launch. In the Hindi business news space, the already existing channels are CNBC Awaaz and Zee Business, while in the English space there is CNBC TV18 and NDTV Profit.

As it has been reiterated by various media analysts, every new channel will have to carve out its own identity and uniqueness within the given space. To gain larger market share, the aim is to reach out to an average consumer rather than players on the stock market. Some are addressing the needs of retail investors living in the small towns, with their coverage in Hindi; while players like NDTV Profit is aiming at the well-heeled yuppie class (Young Urban Professional)! So let the war on presenting the different points of view of our great Indian political melodrama begin! 

Levine Lawrence  is a consulting correspondent for Businesgyan.

Issue BG59 Feb06

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