ADP Wilco (India)
ADP Wilco (India) is the offshore center of ADP Wilco, which in turn is a subsidiary of global transaction processing solutions major Automatic Data Processing. The Indian arm provides development and support services, outsourced securities data management services, and BPO services across the ADP Group. The company registered an increase of 18% in its employee headcount, which touched 341 at the end of fiscal 2002-03. With the announcement of a new technology center in Hyderabad, it is expected that the company will be ramping up its Indian operations to 1,000 employees by next fiscal.

Aptech
Started as a modest division of Apple Industries in 1985, Aptech has made a mark for itself in the computer education and training space. In spite of most of its employees moving to Hexaware post merger, Aptech still has a staff count of 299 persons. The average number of training days for each employee per year was 18 days for technical professionals and eight days for marketing professionals. In the last six months, an average salary hike of 10% was given to employees at various levels. The average tenure of senior professionals is 4.5 years. The company has 2,449 centers in over 52 countries across the world.
Senior vice-president: Sudhir Mathur

Aztec Software
Known for its technical services and Internet software technologies, this 1995 startup was hit hard when the boom went bust.

At present, Aztec has a technical workforce of 183 and is looking to tap the Internet middleware domain. It provides an average of 12 days’ training in a year to its knowledge workers. The company has a flexible work culture, and offers generous employee benefits and ESOPs. Most of the senior professionals in the company have put in more than five years. However, falling revenues and a considerable reduction in clientele has damaged employees’ morale, and led to a high attrition rate of 33.9% in 2002-03.
Vice-president (HR): Girish Nair

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Consulting
Offering good career opportunities to its employees, CGEY more than doubled its employee strength from 214 at the beginning of fiscal 2002-03 in April 2002 to 527 a year later. Those employed in overseas locations account for about a third of the total number of IT professionals in the company. The percentage of women employees in the company went down from 16% to 14% by April 2003. CGEY boasts of an experienced workforce, the majority of whom fall in the five to 10 years’ experience bracket. On the training front, however, the company takes a beating with an average of 5.5 days of training per year for its IT professionals.

Cognizant Technology Solutions
Rated by Forbes as part of world’s 25 fastest-growing technology companies, CTS has 11 software development centers in India. The company is planning a new 3,000-seat facility in Chennai to consolidate its operations in the region, where it has five centers currently. The employee headcount increased 71% over the previous year to touch 6,294 employees as on April 1, 2003. CTS plans to recruit about 1,850 professionals in 2003, taking its headcount to 8,000 by end of the year. 
President & COO: N Lakshmi Narayanan

Hexaware Technologies
Hexaware is a software services provider that is assessed at SEI CMM-Level 5, ISO 9001:2000. The company clocked revenues of Rs 264 crore in the 2002-03 fiscal. Hexaware is on a hiring spree and is planning to employ 300 persons by the end of 2003 for its PeopleSoft services center in Chennai. As on April 1, 2003, the number of IT professionals stood at 1,356, with women making up 19% of the workforce.
DGM (marketing): M Sundararajan

Hughes Software Systems
After making an entry into the HR rankings last year, the company is out of the big league again, but only by a whisker. The stalled revenue growth in 2002-03 for this telecom software player rubbed off on HR as well, as employee count suffered a marginal decline of 2% to reach 1,484 employees—down from 1,511 in the previous year. Attrition rate stood at 14% and retention rate at 85%—both on the positive side of industry averages.
Vice-president (HR): Jayaram Easwaran

Kale Consultants
Started in 1986, Kale Consultants offers BPO services, and application management and consultancy services. The company employs more than 600 persons and trains its technical workers for an average of nine days in a year. As in April 2003, 31% of the company’s IT staff were women. The year 2002-03 saw almost 200 people leaving the company, bringing the attrition rate to 29%.
Vice-president (HR): Vinayak Kamath

KPIT Cummins Infosystems
KPIT is a software development services provider with a 500-plus workforce. Its HR division is divided into three broad areas—recruitment and selection, training and organizational development. KPIT believes that training is a continuous process and spends nearly 188 hours on an average on training and induction. The company added 260 employees in 2002-03. As many as 85 people left the company in the year bringing the attrition rate to 18%.
Executive (HR): Prachi Tisgaonkar

Kshema Technologies
With an annual growth rate of more than 125% since inception in 1997, Kshema is benchmarked for its HR and training policies. Its workforce consists of programmers, domain consultants and project management staff. The total numbers of IT professionals employed are 334. Kshema caters to verticals such as communication technology, financial services and insurance and industrial automation. For the future, healthcare could be a strong area of focus for Mindtree as it is in talks with healthcare major Mckesson Corporation for an offshore project.
Chief HR officer: Louis B Joseph

Mascon Global
The company has been consistently sliding in the DQ Top 20 rankings. Focused on the BFSI and manufacturing verticals, Mascon has a total of 485 IT employees on its rolls, with women making up 15% of the workforce. Almost 97% of its staff are technical workers and the average number of training days given to them in a year is 12 days. By March 2003, the attrition rate stood at 16.8%.
Head (HR): R Venkatanarayanan

Mastek
This 20-year old company crossed the 1,000 headcount mark during fiscal 2002-03. Its overall employee strength stood at 1,358, up by 39% over 2001-02 when the figure was 979. Of these, 19% are women. The company’s overseas employee strength is 476, which is about 35% of the total. Mastek registered an attrition rate of about 9%. When it comes to average days of training in a year, technical professionals at Mastek are better off than their marketing counterparts by a factor of about two. While technical professionals are trained for 11.2 days a year, those in marketing functions get a quota of 6.2 days.

Mindtree Consulting
This software services company recently announced plans of increasing staff by 25%. Mindtree has a strong focus on people and the average number of training hours in a year for its technical workforce is 300 hours. At present, the company employs 
553 people for its technical, sales and marketing operations. Mindtree’s turnover in 2002-03 stood at Rs 88.4 crore, which translated into a growth of 14% for the company. Started in 1999, Mindtree is the youngest company to be assessed at Level 5 for the People Capability Maturity Model.
GM (global people function): Prasad TGC

Moser Baer
Moser Baer was the fastest growing company in the DQ Top 20 financial rankings and the employee count for this hardware major continues to increase almost proportionately. During 2002-03, the company saw its headcount of IT professionals rise by 73% to reach 1,987 employees, while it rose 83% in the previous year to touch 1,150. 

The company’s retention rate touched a whopping 99% and attrition reached a low of a mere 2%. On the compensation front too, the company exceeded the industry’s average salary hike by a marginal figure.
General manager (HR): Rajya Wardhan Ghei

NIIT
Training and software major NIIT is out of the Top 20 list for the first time, even as the company is looking to make a mark in the BPO space, an industry with intensive HR requirements. The total number of employees at NIIT in 2002-03 went up marginally by 3% over the previous year. The attrition and retention rates stayed close to the industry averages of 16% and 82% respectively.
Vice-president (HR): Rosita Rabindra

Nucleus SW Exports
This Noida-based software development firm has about 140 IT professionals based in overseas facilities located in the US, Japan and Singapore. In India, it had a team of 545 as on April 1, 2003, of which 87 are women employees. There is an 
emphasis on skills upgradation and this is reflected in the average days of training per year, which are over 42 days for the technical staff. The company believes that a good work environment and challenging assignments are key to employee satisfaction.

Samsung India Electronics
Working with a lean team, Samsung India has grown into a 37-member team as on April 1, 2003. There are no technical professionals in the team—it is purely a marketing and sales team at the Indian wing of this Korean conglomerate. Of this small team, women constitute a quarter. The company managed to retain all 13 employees employed during 2002-03 because of an open work culture and a decent compensation package.

SAP Labs India
SAP Labs India is SAP’s largest development center outside Germany and is also one of the fastest-growing SAP subsidiaries. The total number of employees stood at 549 at the beginning of fiscal 2003-04 and the company has plans to hire 250 engineers by the end of 2003. It has also earmarked Euro 20 million for its software development campus being set up in Bangalore, which is expected to be operational by the end of this year. On an average, the company devoted 30 days of training on each employee in 2002-03.
Manager (compensation and benefits): Pooja Gupta

Sasken Communication Technologies
A flexible and informal work culture prevails at Sasken, and perks and benefits are the same across the board. Out of the total count of 862 IT professionals, which spans all levels and locations, 777 are based in India. The company added nearly 300 employees in 2002-03, while its attrition rate stood at a high 17%. The average training days per year for its employees were 4.1 days and 7.5 days for technical and marketing professionals respectively.

ServionT Global Solutions
Chennai-based ServionT makes products and services for the enterprise segment. The 247-strong company has a presence in six countries. The average number of training days for its technical employees is 11 days in a year. The company enjoys a marginal attrition rate, which is positively balanced by new recruits. On an average, salaries were hiked by 22% in 2002-03 across all levels in the company.
Senior executive (HR): K P Ajith

SES Technologies
The company is backed by a strong network in India and is a distributor for Adaptec and Molex, as well as a partner for Microsoft and Accuraid. The company values its employees and believes in imparting training to its workforce. On an average, it spends 40 days in a year on training its sales and marketing professionals. Its employee strength of 104 remained stable in 2002-03, as no one left or joined the company during the year. The average tenure of senior professionals in the company is eight years.

Sierra Atlantic
The company offers lifecycle application management solutions and helps customers optimize their investments in enterprise business applications such as ERP, CRM and SCM. Sierra Atlantic has 300 clients at present. It recently struck a software services deal with Cadence Design Systems. The company added 90 employees in 2002-03 to its earlier strength of 190. The average percentage salary hike given at the junior level is 15%, while the average number of years put in by senior
professionals is seven years.
Vice-president: Sanjay Khendry

Sonata Software
This Bangalore-based company saw its workforce weakening to 689 in fiscal 2002-03 from 713 in the previous year, a decrease of about 3.5%. Women constitute about 20% of the headcount. A majority of the employees at Sonata are experienced, and fall in the two brackets of two to five years’ and five to 10 years’ experience. As with most technology companies, the average number of training days for technical professionals far exceeded those for marketing professionals at 15 and four days per year respectively. The company believes that the organization’s growth, its performance and results can satisfy its employees the most.

Persistent Systems
February 2003 saw this company cross the 500 mark in employee headcount. The figure rose to 514 by the end of fiscal 2002-03 in April 2003. Women constitute a healthy 30% of the total number. The company trains its technical workers on an average of seven to eight days a year. Technically challenging work coupled with a positive work environment have helped keep the employees satisfied.

vMoksha Technologies
The world’s youngest CMM Level 5 company, vMoksha Technologies—a 2001 startup—ramped up its employee numbers to reach 371 at the beginning of this fiscal, up 77% over the previous year. In October 2002, the company entered into a contract with US-based S1 Corporation for development of products for S1 and set up a development center in Pune with an initial staff of 100 persons for the same. A lackluster financial performance in 2002-03 meant lower-than-industry salary hikes for its employees.
Vice-president (HR): Greg D’Souza

Xansa (India)
The company managed to retain all employees recruited in fiscal 2002-03 as it provided opportunities to its workforce in various divisions like consultancy, BPO and software development. It added 231 employees during the year. This saw the overall headcount, which includes all IT professionals across all locations, increasing to 890—a 9% increase over the previous fiscal. Of its total strength, 309 marketing and technical IT professionals are placed overseas. Women constitute 7% of its workforce. However, on the training front, Xansa’s performance has not been very encouraging. The average number of training days in a year stands at five days for both technical and marketing professionals.