While most of the training sector cried slowdown, the bigger players quietly consolidated their businesses and emerged stronger. Training companies posted an overall growth rate of 48%, much in consonance with the growth of the IT industry itself, and much higher than its five-year CAGR of 35%. In 2000-01, the clear training cry was fundamentals. Post-dot-coms and slowdown, there was a definite swing towards fundamentals-oriented long-term basic courses. A majority of the industry prefers in-house training to outsourcing, Not surprising, then, that the domestic corporate training market posted a massive growth of 74.5%, compared to a meager 4% growth last year. But a black mark in the industry was the winding up of Zap and Wintech, which disappeared from the scene; they had been launched with great hype and fanfare earlier.

Among the important events of the year were:

• Microsoft’s aggressive positioning of C# along with its .NET strategy saw a number of courses being launched

• Courses like ASP, VB, Java went out of fashion as projects dried up

• Large training vendors went on a media blitz in the slowdown to reaffirm their position as market leaders

• Online education began to pick up with increasing Net proliferation, but access charges and connectivity may still be prove to be a hitch

• Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) emerged as a new concept with ZILS and Hughes Escorts Communications (HECL) taking the lead

• NIIT, Aptech and Educomp Datamatics bagged state government projects for computerization of schools and universities in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Punjab.

Human Resources

HR was always stronger in the IT industry than in any other industry segment. This year, intellectual capital became an IT company’s most precious asset. Dataquest called 1999-2000 the ‘Era of the Knowledge Worker’. By that yardstick, this was the ‘Year of the Knowledge Capitalists’. The first half of the year was a time of double-quick hiring rates, big salaries and crazy perks. In the second half, new hiring slowed down and finally in Q4, came almost to a halt. For those in love with sheer numbers, the IT sector workforce jumped by 24%, from 425,000 to over 525,000. This was the B2B or ‘Back to Basics’ year, but finding good talent with long experience remained a major problem area.

Outlook

Even at the risk of being labeled an optimist, one can say that the worst of the slowdown seems to be behind us. Not because there’s suddenly going to be a let-up in the grim situation. Not because Indian companies are going to find some magic formula to win all outsourcing contracts in the world. Certainly not because the government policies are going to change so dynamically that MNCs start making massive investments in India, overlooking economies like China. The slowdown will be left behind, because India Inc has shown the acumen to see the slowdown in the correct manner—as a challenge, and the opportunity beyond that challenge. Our companies have acted fast and wisely, spreading their market horizons and making strong forays into the European and APAC regions. Stronger fundamentals and judicious revenue distributions will now ensure that the next slowdown, whenever it happens, doesn’t send shock-waves like this one did. The consolidation that Indian IT has undergone promises that.