News Hour- Grid failure: How Indian IT companies ran operations

While India created dubious history on Tuesday with the world's largest blackout, its $100-billion software and services sector managed to keep its lights and links with clients on by drawing power from diesel gensets. But not before India's image as a premier investment destination for technology was called into question by jittery clients worried about the ability of companies to provide uninterrupted services. 

"The blackout has impacted the perception of India at a country level. India's image has taken a beating," said Som Mittal, president of ITtrade body Nasscom. 

"Earlier power cuts and load shedding was a major problem but were less known to clients. But with a massive blackout at a country level, India's power issues are now known to everyone. It can impact business perception." He urged the government to use predictive technologies to prevent such blackouts. 

Indian companies run IT operations for airlines , banks and rail services across the world. A large amount of back-office work from the City of London is outsourced to Gurgaon, Noida and Delhi. Indian companies also handle back offices for Eurostar, the official rail partner for the Olympics. 

UK's Serco, which handles rail operations and back-office work for the London Metropolitan Police, has large centres in Delhi and Gurgaon. US-listed companies like Qualcomm, Accenture, Sapient, Ericsson, WNS, Alcatel Lucent, Convergys, UnitedHealth Group are also based in Gurgaon, which house about 3 lakh software professionals. 

"Even though business remains unaffected, worried clients are asking us about the impact in India," said Piyush Srivastava, a senior vice-president at NIIT Technologies, which has its largest delivery centre in Noida. Every time there is a power failure, extra fuel and transport costs are incurred, he said, adding that the company was arranging pick-up and drop-off for 3,000 employees on Tuesday. 

NIIT Technologies has estimated the cost of keeping power supply going with diesel gensets at 7 lakh a day. For larger companies that employ over 80,000 people, most of whom are based in the northern region, the extra expenses will be much higher. India's largest BPO Genpact said it is employing double back-up with UPS and diesel gensets across northern and eastern India. 

"Business was not impacted though we did see some employees getting stuck in traffic jams," said a Genpact spokeswoman. Genpact has about 12,000 people working in Delhi and the National Capital Region. It has 15 centres spread across Delhi, Gurgaon, Dehradun, Jaipur, Kolkata. India's largest operator Bharti Airtel said it has enough diesel back-up to run its cell towers for 2-3 days. 

"Our Communication lines remained unaffected," said a Bharti representative . Kiran Karnik, a former president of Nascom was of the view that lack of good infrastructure has always been a point concern. "This impacts not only the companies looking at investing in the country but also those who are looking to set up operations or getting business from India." 
(Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com)