IBM's business in India has quadrupled in five years, not just on exploding headcount, but on domestic revenues too. Even with the sale of IBM's PC division to Lenovo of China, its revenues weren't badly dented. For IBM's enterprises sales of ThinkPads and desktops continued, billed as part of projects and annuity contracts. Meanwhile, Lenovo entered India and jumped right into the DQTop20 club, trebling IBM's PC division revenues of last year. So the sale was good for both.

So IBM now has services and consulting, its global focus, and enterprise servers and software. It's betting big on a sharp focus (versus HP's wide-angle portfolio). It picks up other products from partners, of whom Lenovo is the biggest. IBM's growing faster here than in other emerging nations: China (8%), Brazil (7%) and Russia (29%). (The BRIC countries added up to $3.8 bn in revenues for IBM.) 

Servers and storage lead growth in India; IBM still leads the x86 server space, ahead of HP and HCL.  And alongside HP and EMC, it shares 24% of the SAN market; and it grew over 80% in overall disk storage, to a share of 24%. Major wins included a core banking project across 1,000 Canara Bank branches, and a Rs 56 crore deal to consolidate, build and support IDBI's IT infrastructure. There's also been a strong SMB focus, down into the B & C cities.

India plays a key role in IBM's “globally integrated company” strategy. Thus, as announced by the usually reclusive Sam Palmisano at an unprecedented employee and investor gathering in Bangalore in June '06, with APJ Abdul Kalam present: IBM is tripling investment in India from $2bn to nearly $6bn in three years. This will include a new breed of service delivery centers, a telecom research and innovation center, and more.

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