July 2006

Welcome..

Welcome to the latest edition of our Newsletter - it's set to be another busy year as we showcase our partnership with Caudwell Communications and announce NIIT's latest deal in the Netherlands. I am also proud to confirm that NIIT has acquired a controlling interest in ROOM Solutions Ltd.

With updates of NIIT's Annual Day, and a Dear Diary special written by one of our BDM's who amusingly elaborates on his experiences whilst escorting a prospective client around India recently, I hope you enjoy the read.

As a final point, I would like to take the opportunity to pay my personal respects to a great man who has become a regular icon on the pages of our Newsletter. Sadly, Rahul Nanda has passed away; his sudden departure is a great loss to all who knew him.

Carl Stadler, Marketing Manager NIIT Technologies Limited

NIIT Mourns A Great Leader

It is with a deep sense of loss that we have to share with you the untimely passing away of Rahul Nanda - President of UK and Continent Europe, in Delhi on 15th March 2006.

Rahul played a stellar role in establishing NIIT's presence in Europe, with his role over the last year expanding to also take responsibility for operations in the UK. His personal commitment and engagement has been instrumental in acquiring and sustaining many long-term business relationships in the UK and Continent and his contribution to the corporation in shaping its growth has been invaluable.

He led his team from the front and it goes without saying, he will be missed deeply by all the staff whom, during his 7 years at NIIT, have been privileged to work with him, both onsite and offshore.

Customers and staff alike will miss Rahul�s ready smile, his down to earth style of connecting with people, infectious enthusiasm and valuable advice. In this time of grief, we extend our deepest condolences to his wife, sons and other family members, and pray for strength for his family to help cope with this tragic loss.

CEO Arvind Thakur now directly oversees the UK, ably supported by the UK leadership Team.

Dear Diary: A Day in the Life of a Senior VP...

June 2006
Imagine going from a cool, grey UK climate to a hot, sticky, dusty 40 degrees inside 10 hours. That�s what faced me as I travelled from Heathrow to New Delhi. It was like hitting a brick wall made of compacted heat once you walk into the arrivals hall. Leaving the airport, I saw just some of the modes of transport in India; rickshaws, bullocks pulling carts, camels heaving huge grain trailers, three wheeler taxis, black Hindustan Taxis (created from old 1950s designed Austin Cambridge�s made by British Leyland), a swarm of motor bikes (including Royal Enfield�s made in Chennai), tricycles, all of which were in four lanes of constantly tooting traffic in a free for all jamboree to road management, where succeeding to get to your destination means ignoring your mirrors completely and looking ahead at all times � constantly tooting your horn!
I was here with a prospective UK client who was looking at our development and testing facilities in Delhi to judge whether they could work with NIIT and whether the sales hype matched the technical and operational reality. Over the week that enfolded, it did! When my clients arrived in Delhi they were open mouthed. We had a quick breakfast, met our guide and visited Delhi�s Red Fort. Day one allowed us to see our first elephant, and tour the red sandstone constructed fort built by Shah Jehan in the 16th century. Taking in copious water and clicking away merrily with our cameras, we finished by tripping over an Indian Fakir and his King Cobra before we got back to our transport. The overwhelming sensation was �people� � thousands and thousands � like a huge football crowd that never dissipates. The guide took us to a Carpet and Jewellery shop and the obligatory haggling ensued as we sipped hot, sweet Kashmir tea. By... those guys can sell and browbeat punters. Later we visited the India Gate.

Much preparation goes into evaluating whether a company should do business in India. My clients visited two other prospective vendors in Bangalore and Mumbai before returning to spend time with NIIT for the rest of the week. They had an exhausting schedule designed to show them what we could do from an S&M, development, managed services, legacy modernisation and enterprise integration aspect. They were systematically won over by a succession of extremely professional colleagues who shared their experiences of servicing other UK companies. NIIT works on the revealing the four �Cs� � customer focus, our competence, our capability & instilling confidence! We interspersed this revelation of capability with an elephant ride over the coffee break�personal video cameras were rolling for that one � a moment to capture and savour for time as a client mounted the huge, powerful animal to go for a short trundle around the NIIT car park!

Having captivated our clients with our proven IT capability, a day to Agra was organised. We saw some incredible sites: piles of �pie� like discs which turned out to be bullock/cattle manure that is dried and used as fuel as well as adding flavour to the tandoor ovens; camels; roving herds of cattle (one eating a white plastic bag (?)); and thousands of villagers immersed in everyday life giving us curious looks! We pulled over as we entered The State of Utter Pradesh and lo and behold, there was another Fakir with an active King Cobra. We reflected on this most marvellous of journeys and what we had seen - rip roaring laughter emanated for hours! When we reached Agra, our guide greeted us and escorted us to one of the wonders of the world � the beautiful Taj Mahal. All of us were in awe as we toured the grounds and listened to the tragic story of Shah Jehan and his third wife, Mumtaj who the shrine is dedicated to. It took 22 years to build and 20,000 of India�s finest craftsmen worked on it. What we didn�t� know was that Shah Jehan wanted the shrine to be the best worksmanship in the world and he purportedly systematically removed the fingers of all the workmen when it was complete so that they could not build anything so beautiful elsewhere for someone else!

Next day, at NIIT we concluded a comprehensive agenda that ensured our clients were totally confident of our ability to deliver a range of solutions. But one more surprise was in store. My Indian colleagues took us to supposedly one of the best Afghan restaurants in the world, where we were presented with the largest naan I�ve ever seen! A marvellous night was had by all, our client made a speech of gratitude over what they had experienced during the week saying it was absolutely fabulous and they could not wait to return.

Anyone who is serious about off-shoring IT services to India must experience this, it is not to be missed and should be an intrinsic part of your final evaluation process!
Tom Crosby - Business Development Manager, NIIT Technologies Ltd(UK)

People News...

Kadambari Rao Batra has recently joined NIIT Technologies as Business Development Manager for the Insurance sector. She was previously supporting Pre-Sales and Domain Competence Building for NIIT's Insurance Practice from India, where she has worked with clients across the globe.

"The UK is one of the largest Insurance markets in the world and I am looking forward to leveraging NIIT's world-class solutions for the insurance sector here" says Kadambari.
NIIT Acquires UK Insurance Solutions Company
NIIT Technologies has acquired a controlling interest in ROOM Solutions Ltd, a US$ 25 million, UK-based Insurance Solutions provider headquartered in London employing approximately 120 professionals. The move will strengthen NIIT Technologies’ presence in the Insurance vertical. NIIT will acquire the remaining equity in the company over the next 18 months.

ROOM Solutions is focused on the commercial insurance market including IT solutions to the customers of Lloyd’s, the largest reinsurance market in the UK.

Talking about this acquisition, Mr. Rajendra S. Pawar, Chairman, NIIT Technologies said, “The strategic direction for NIIT has been to sharply focus and scale its business in a few select industry segments such as Insurance. ROOM Solutions strengthens NIIT Technologies’ insurance capability by bringing in deep domain expertise in the Commercial Insurance space”.

Commenting on the benefits of this acquisition Mr. Marcus Broome, Founder, ROOM Solutions said, “NIIT Technologies’ expertise in providing technology based solutions in the Insurance space will expand our service offerings to the ROOM customer base and improve our value proposition through the established global delivery model of NIIT Technologies.”  more...

NIIT Launches Managed Services
NIIT Technologies has expanded the range of its service offerings by launching its Managed Services business to address the rapidly expanding remote infrastructure management opportunity. According to the NASSCOM-McKinsey Study 2005, the total addressable market for IT infrastructure offshoring inclusive of support, network administration and help desk is estimated to be US$ 70-85 Billion.

The new solutions from NIIT Technologies will include operations and management of application and essential infrastructural services for global clients.

Mr. Arvind Thakur, CEO, NIIT Technologies said, "It is estimated that less than 5 percent of the addressable Managed Services market has been addressed till date, indicating significant head room for growth."

"The first wave of offshoring was with Application Development and Maintenance and the next wave with Business Process Outsourcing. With the launch of Managed Services, our attempt is to ride the crest of the third wave around remote Infrastructure and Application Management," Mr. Thakur added.

NIIT Technologies will offer global clients a range of complete end-to-end Managed Services through shared data centers, making it possible for them to run their core applications and services, 24x7, cost effectively. NIIT Technologies will offer these services from state-of-the-art data centres located in India and Thailand and extend services out of Europe and the USA, thereby providing global coverage.  more...

NIIT and Caudwell - A Successful Partnership
In 2004, Caudwell Communications Limited identified the need to grow its IT Organisation as rapidly as possible, whilst addressing a number of vital pre-requisites...

Caudwell required a scalable IT model that could absorb large fluctuations in demand; create processes that would constantly evolve; and secure a stable workforce to meet ad-hoc and challenging business demands. All of these criteria, of course, had to be met with no risk to the business, with guaranteed delivery, and in the most cost efficient way.

With only 7 IT development staff, and 10,000 man days of development mapped out for 2004, launching Broadband and Line Rental products to the market in a timely manner was going to be a challenge. So began the engagement with NIIT Technologies Limited, with both parties signing up to a joint partnership approach - sharing risk and tIn 2004, Caudwell Communications Limited identified the need to grow its IT Organisation as rapidly as possible, whilst addressing a number of vital pre-requisites…

Caudwell required a scalable IT model that could absorb large fluctuations in demand; create processes that would constantly evolve; and secure a stable workforce to meet ad-hoc and challenging business demands. All of these criteria, of course, had to be met with no risk to the business, with guaranteed delivery, and in the most cost efficient way.

With only 7 IT development staff, and 10,000 man days of development mapped out for 2004, launching Broadband and Line Rental products to the market in a timely manner was going to be a challenge. So began the engagement with NIIT Technologies Limited, with both parties signing up to a joint partnership approach – sharing risk and tackling key challenges in areas of Development, Testing, Support and Maintenance.

Using the Dual Shore methodology, the initial projects focussed on tactical quick wins – dealing with the backlog of business critical work packs. The flexibility of NIIT meant that multiple projects were run simultaneously, and over a period of time, extensive application knowledge was exchanged between both organisations and the partnership has now matured into one based on mutual trust and transparency, resulting in continuously improving quality, and greater value for money. The defined Development and Support delivery models implemented by NIIT are now today, an integral part of Caudwell’s IT processes

Steve Read, Associate Director of IT Development & Test states “NIIT has brought a wealth of experience of technologies to us, with pre-canned processes speeding up delivery. The NIIT team have an excellent work ethos, they take pride and ownership of their actions, and have provided a healthy challenge to the in-house teams. In short, NIIT has brought a wealth of resource to Caudwell Communications”.

He continues, “Since 2004, NIIT has worked with Caudwell to successfully deliver 40 back to back, high quality Projects, all of which were delivered on time. This is a tremendous achievement and I would personally like to thank all of those involved.” ackling key challenges in areas of Development, Testing, Support and Maintenance.

Using the Dual Shore methodology, the initial projects focussed on tactical quick wins - dealing with the backlog of business critical work packs. The flexibility of NIIT meant that multiple projects were run simultaneously, and over a period of time, extensive application knowledge was exchanged between both organisations and the partnership has now matured into one based on mutual trust and transparency, resulting in continuously improving quality, and greater value for money. The defined Development and Support delivery models implemented by NIIT are now today, an integral part of Caudwell�s IT processes

Steve Read, Associate Director of IT Development & Test states "NIIT has brought a wealth of experience of technologies to us, with pre-canned processes speeding up delivery. The NIIT team have an excellent work ethos, they take pride and ownership of their actions, and have provided a healthy challenge to the in-house teams. In short, NIIT has brought a wealth of resource to Caudwell Communications".

He continues, "Since 2004, NIIT has worked with Caudwell to successfully deliver 40 back to back, high quality Projects, all of which were delivered on time. This is a tremendous achievement and I would personally like to thank all of those involved."   more...

Generali Insurance Signs NIIT IT Deal
NIIT Technologies Limited has signed an agreement with European insurance and financial services major, Generali Group's subsidiary in Netherlands for revamping its IT systems. Under this three-year agreement the company would offer a wide range of IT services to support Generali's growth plans in the Dutch insurance market and re-engineer the existing back office application for policy management in the life insurance domain, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"With our deep understanding of the Dutch Insurance and Pensions market, and sharp focus on Europe, we look forward to building a mutually beneficial and lasting relationship with Generali," NIIT's Chief Executive Officer Arvind Thakur said.

The company, through this alliance, would enable Generali to make its insurance products directly accessible to its customers and brokers over the Internet. Services under the initial agreement would be offered in a dual-shore model with a significant part of the work being done from India.  more...

Company Citations
NIIT Technologies� Annual Day gives the opportunity for NIIT to recognise its members of staff who achieve a work ethic that goes beyond the call of duty. We are pleased to announce the names of those recognised individuals who were awarded a citation and presented with a gift at this year�s event as:
  • Wasim Haque
  • Sabahul Hassan
  • Vidhya Bhushan Bahl
  • Sanjay Tripathi
  • Vishu Bhargava
  • Punarvasu Tyagi
  • Vikramaditya Lal
  • Aman singh Bhati
  • Amit Shekhar
  • Joyce Sedgwick
  • Sujeet Kumar
  • Mohammed Sajiid
    •   more...
    NIIT Technologies is a diversified global IT Services company offering e-Commerce, CRM Solutions, Offshore Development, Applications Maintenance/Support, Legacy Transformation, Knowledge Solutions and Business Process Management Services. Spanning 19 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific and India, it has been working with global corporations for over two decades. NIIT understands the complex issues surrounding outsourcing and offshoring while partnering with its customers to provide practical IT Solutions.