PDF: 2962 pages, 5.2 MB - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

Software/IT Services/Business Process Outsourcing
Chasing Talent and New Markets
As with other tech companies setting up shop in India at that time, cost was a part of the equation,
but not a large part. “While we appreciate the price difference, that’s not why we’re doing
this,” Lang stresses. “The numbers are working against us; we simply can’t hire enough people to
do what we want to do.” The number of computer science majors graduated from U.S. universities
has fallen 48% since 2000, he says. Many of the remaining graduates were foreign nationals
in the U.S. on student visas and are now discouraged from staying on to work, under visa rules
that Lang says are “policies to solve a six-year old problem that is largely going away.”
Most new product development is for global markets, so India has become an increasingly
logical and attractive choice. Autodesk initially selected China for its Asia operations and today
has some 1,400 employees in Shanghai, but IP considerations and a need to further broaden the
talent pool have prompted further Asia diversification. India represents a sizable market opportunity
for Autodesk in four areas: manufacturing; infrastructure; architecture, planning and construction;
and media and entertainment. Working through its nearly 60 channel partners, the
company wants to expand its customer base in these areas and also upgrade existing users to
newer 3-D modeling programs.
In 2005, Autodesk acquired a firm to which it had been outsourcing some development work,
and it is transitioning those engineers and programmers to become the core of the Pune center.
At present, the Pune staff is about two dozen; plans to grow it to 100 have been slowed temporarily
due to the current market downturn. Autodesk’s back office applications, administrative,
and data center work in India remains outsourced to HCL Technologies under a five-year contract
signed in 2005.
Among Autodesk’s India customers:
• Brakes India, Ltd. a manufacturer of automotive brakes for all Indian car brands, as well
as for Volvo, Ford and Mercedes Benz;
• Rollcon Engineering India, a designer and builder of precision tube, pipe, and cold rolling
steel mills;
• GB Engineering Enterprises, a manufacturer of boilers and components, heat recovery
steam generators, and desalination plants;
• Arjun Technologies, an engineering company that builds process plants for the pulp and
paper industry; and
• Anibrain Digital, a Mumbai video effects and animation studio whose credits include the
Hollywood films Highlander and Resident Evil: Extinction.
In recent years, Autodesk has moved aggressively to strengthen its Indian reseller network and
form new university partnerships. A 12-city roadshow in late 2007 with distributor Aditya Infotech
focused on raising the firm’s value added resellers from 30 to more than 50, extending its reach
into Tier 2 and 3 cities, and marketing heavily to online gaming and other media users.
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