【英语中国】印度外包业进军中国遇阻

India’s information technology outsourcing companies have established global footprints that stretch from Saudi Arabia to San Diego in the US. Yet they have struggled to develop one of the most promising markets, just over the Himalaya mountains in neighbouring China.

So difficult a frontier is the Chinese market for India’s pioneering outsourcing groups that their leaders would sooner talk about the potential of Latin America than the world’s fastest growing large economy.

Yet some are still trying to make inroads, recognising the risks of shunning the lucrative opportunity presented by large, fast-growing Chinese companies. Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT outsourcing group, said yesterday that it planned to double its 1,100-strong workforce in China in the coming year.

China and Japan are widely acknowledged by India’s software leaders to be the hardest outsourcing markets to crack. Japan gets its rating on account of a perceived resistance to change among its country’s businesses and a lack of urgency to innovate, while China’s difficulty is ascribed to cultural differences. Both markets pose linguistic challenges for an Indian sector that has prospered using English as its medium.

“China, while it has significant potential, takes time to learn. It’s not easy,” says N. Chandrasekaran, the chief executive of Mumbai-based TCS, which employs about 160,000 people worldwide.

“We want to grow. We want to grow faster but it takes time to learn the market, attract people and retain people. Attrition levels are higher in China than they are in India and that makes it difficult.”

Most Indian outsourcing companies have established operations in China. They recognise the potential of servicing big, fast-growing Chinese companies with large customer bases and sizeable workforces, and developing expertise to service other parts of Asia.

Wipro Technologies, the Bangalore-based IT services company, has opened a global delivery centre in Chengdu, in addition to a facility in Shanghai. Its Chengdu centre offers services for manufacturing, banking, financial services and insurance industries. It has expertise in English, Chinese and Japanese.

Genpact, India’s largest business processing company, operates BPO service centres in the Chinese cities of Changchun, Dalian and Shanghai.

Suresh Vaswani, joint chief executive of Wipro, puts the challenges of building scale down to more granular market-related issues. He says India’s nimble private sector often finds it difficult to come to terms with China’s more state-driven enterprises.

He identifies strong possibilities working with multinationals in China and large domestic companies. But he recommends that any business strategy take into account the “state- influenced” nature of the market, and the need to create local jobs.

Pramod Bhasin, the chief executive of Genpact, agrees that India’s entrepreneurial style of doing business does not easily gel with China’s more deliberate business culture.

One of the keys to success, he says, is knowing how to navigate China’s corporate power structure, and the complicated personal networks that lead to business opportunities. Another is learning from the example of successful US companies such as McKinsey, IBM and Accenture that establishing a Chinese identity, and hiring a Chinese workforce, are essential. “In China, we are Chinese,” he says simply.

In spite of the obstacles, there is an increasing willingness among large Chinese companies including state-owned enterprises to outsource certain services to create a growing onshore market in China.

Beijing is taking steps to encourage the outsourcing industry, whose revenues grew to about $26bn last year, according to Deloitte, the auditing firm. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Finance announced that outsourcing service providers in 21 cities would be freed from business tax on offshore contracts until 2014.

Industry executives in China say Indian companies struggle to get the best out of their Chinese operations. “It is much easier for Chinese companies to manage large-scale operations in China with Chinese staff,” says Seth Pinegar, vice-president at iSoftStone, a leading Chinese outsourcing services provider.

The difficulties encountered by India’s outsourcers have caught the eye of New Delhi. Earlier this year, Anand Sharma, India’s commerce minister, extracted a personal commitment from Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to rebalance a booming bilateral trading relationship skewed overwhelmingly in China’s favour.

Alongside Bollywood films and basmati rice, IT was singled out for “corrective steps” to bring harmony between the world’s fastest growing, yet starkly different, large economies.

从沙特阿拉伯到美国的圣地亚哥，印度信息科技外包公司已经在全球各地设立了业务。然而，他们却难以开发前景最为看好的市场之一——喜马拉雅山另一侧的邻邦中国。

对于印度先驱的外包集团而言，打入中国市场太过艰难，以至于他们宁愿谈论拉丁美洲的潜力，也不愿谈论这个全球增长最快的大型经济体。

不过，一些企业仍试图进入中国市场，它们意识到了错过迅速增长的中国大型企业所带来的盈利机遇的代价。印度最大的IT外包企业塔塔咨询服务有限公司(TCS)昨日表示，计划来年将在华员工数量（目前为1100多名）增加一倍。

印度软件业领袖普遍将中国和日本视为最难攻克的外包市场。之所以难以进入日本，是因为该国企业明显抵制变革，并且在创新方面缺乏紧迫感；而难以进入中国，则是因为文化差异。印度IT业普遍使用英语作为媒介，这也为进入中日市场带来了语言上的挑战。

总部位于孟买的TCS公司首席执行官N?钱德拉塞克兰(N. Chandrasekaran)表示：“尽管中国市场潜力巨大，但了解它需要时间，这并非易事。”TCS在全球拥有大约16万名员工。

“我们希望增长，我们希望更快地增长，但我们需要时间去了解这个市场、吸引人才并留住人才。中国的离职率高于印度，这让事情有些棘手。”

印度大多数外包企业已在中国设立了业务。它们认识到了为拥有庞大客户基础和众多员工、发展迅速的大型中国企业提供服务的潜力，以及开发专业技能、以服务于亚洲其它地区的潜力。

总部位于班加罗尔的IT服务企业威普罗(Wipro Technologies)在成都设立了一家全球派送中心，该公司在上海也建有一家工厂。成都中心为制造业、银行业、金融服务和保险业提供服务。该公司可以用英语、汉语和日语提供专业服务。

印度最大的业务流程(BPO)外包集团Genpact在中国长春、大连和上海三个城市开设了BPO中心。

威普罗联席首席执行官苏雷士?维斯瓦尼(Suresh Vaswani)把难以形成规模归因于一些更细微的市场问题。他表示，印度灵活的私人部门常常发现，难以与中国更大程度上由政府主导的企业达成协议。

他指出，印度企业与在华跨国企业和大型中国公司非常有可能合作。但他建议，任何企业战略都必须考虑到市场的“政府影响”特性，以及在当地创造就业岗位的必要性。

Genpact首席执行官帕拉蒙?哈辛(Pramod Bhasin)认为，印度在经商方面的企业家风格，不容易与中国更为审慎的商业文化相融合。

哈辛表示，成功的秘诀之一，是懂得如何把握中国的企业权力结构和可能带来业务机遇的复杂人际关系。另一个秘诀是向麦肯锡(McKinsey)、IBM和埃森哲(Accenture)等获得成功的美国公司学习——确立中国身份、雇用中国员工是关键所在。他简单地表示：“在中国，我们就是中国人。”

尽管存在种种障碍，但包括国有企业在内的大型中国公司，越来越愿意外包某些服务，以创建一个日益增长的国内市场。

中国政府正在采取措施鼓励外包行业。根据审计公司德勤(Deloitte)的数据，去年中国外包业收入增至260亿美元左右。本月早些时候，中国财政部宣布，自2010年7月1日起至2013年12月31日，对21个城市的外包服务提供商从事离岸服务外包业务取得的收入免征营业税。

中国外包业高管表示，印度公司的在华业务很难发挥最大效用。中国领先的外包服务提供商软通动力(iSoftStone)副总裁潘思哲(Seth Pinegar)表示：“对中国公司而言，与本国员工一起管理大规模业务要容易得多。”

印度外包业遭遇的这些困难，已经引起了本国政府的注意。今年早些时候，印度商务部长阿南德?沙玛(Anand Sharma)得到了中国总理温家宝本人的承诺：要让明显有利于中国的双边贸易关系恢复平衡。

除了宝莱坞电影和印度香米，印度IT业被选中，作为让这两个全球增长最快、却截然不同的大型经济体融洽相处的“矫正措施”。

译者/君悦