IT COMPANIES GUN FOR COVER AFTER BLASTS

PP Thimmaya, Bangalore, July 28, 2008
The Economic Times

Apprehension, rather than panic, appears to best characterise the mood of corporates in India’s technology capital after the explosion of eight small bombs on Friday shook Bangalore last.

Home to some of the world’s largest technology firms and employing some five lakh people in the IT services sector, the Bangalore blasts have attracted global attention and thrown up questions about vulnerability of city to similar incidents in the future. Top IT companies that ET spoke to say there is no panic, but they are keenly watching how the government reacts to the situation and looking for assurances that security will be a top priority.

At the same time, technology firms say they are now going to be more focussed on business risk mitigation plans to keep operations running in case of disruptions. In the past, whenever the city has been hit by incidents such riots or bandhs, IT companies have transferred the day’s work to other locations or worked on a holiday to compensate for the loss of work-time. Early inquiries also reveal that there have been no alarm bells ringing for this industry from overseas clients, especially in the US and Europe, their key markets.

Last Friday, the safety of staff was the top concern for tech firms. Information was shared on internal websites to ensure that all their employees were safe. Some companies paced the departure of staff to avoid traffic jams. The IT firms also stepped up security measures immediately.

The larger ones such as Wipro and Infosys have massive campuses and put all visitors through strict scrutiny even on a normal day. These companies are surrounded by electric fences and armed gunmen guard the entrances. Some even have bomb-detection squads! “Events in the last couple of days have been unfortunate and we have also enhanced our security measures. On work front, there has been no disruption and the great thing being that the city has bounced back to normalcy...it is heartening,” Pratik Kumar, executive VP of HR for Wipro, said.

Another IT industry official who did not want to be named was of the view that it was the duty of the government to provide security even though companies bore the responsibility as far as their own premises were concerned. The general feeling is that government needs to send positive signals that the economic environment will not hampered in any way because of the concerns about security.