Software industry assessing impact

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 12. Suspense continues over the fate of a large contingent of Indian IT professionals in the U.S., target of worst ever terrorist attack, with apex association of the software industry saying that it was assessing the impact including exports.

Not only the U.S. is the single largest destination for India's software exports totalling over Rs. 28,000 crores, a number of Indian IT companies involved in financial services have significant exposure in Manhatten that housed the collapsed World Trade Center.

``It would take some time for the industry to fully assess the impact, if any, on software trade. But we feel that there is not likely to be any negative fallout...," Mr. Phiroz Vandrevala, Chairman of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) said.

Most Indian companies either have a direct presence in the U.S. or have its employees working at the client's site, industry sources said, but did not confirm as to which companies had their offices in the collapsed structure.

The IT major Wipro, which had 50 employees present in New York at the time of the attack, has been able to establish contact with 46 of them.

"We were successfully able to establish contact with 46 of them, who are safe, but are still awaiting news of the rest," a Wipro statement said.

Meanwhile, an Infosys spokesperson said, "the company has about 200 employees in New York area, but we have no reports of casualties."

Leading Indian software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said all its employees in New York area are safe.

"We have a few hundreds of employees in New York area and all are safe", a top company official said.

Another Indian software major NIIT has claimed it has established contact with all its employees in the U.S. "All our employees are safe," a spokesman of NIIT said. HCL could not be contacted for comments.

The impact of the terrorist attack was felt on the stocks of leading Indian IT companies on the bourses with Wipro scrips closed at Rs. 1,460.80, plunged by over 28 per cent. Satyam Computers were down by 18 per cent to close at Rs. 157.50 while Infosys went down by 10 per cent to Rs. 3,179.

NIIT closed at Rs. 140.10, down by 15 per cent.

- PTI

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