THE HINDU’s Website Design at Foreign Source
Today’s discussion is something different than the usual investing related topics. It is about announcement of new online edition of The Hindu magazine. This newspaper is about 130 year old company and is considered as one of the best in breed news paper in the country. Attached is the photo image of the front web page which shows the announcement for new beta website. One aspect that I observed and it stood out was about who was involved in designing this new website.
You can read in the image that the design was done in Florida, USA; workflow solution was by Denmark based company; and web publishing system is from company based in Norway.
IT-lacks-innovation-DNA
In last 10 years or so, I have been (and continue to do so) tired of reading about India as IT bigwig and how great we are. I keep hearing about Indian IT companies taking on the world with storm. Well, I will reserve my comment so as not to anger or deride IT folks who read my blog. There is nothing personal about individuals here. But I will ask few questions….
- Ironical;
- Intriguing; or
- This is reflection of our IT sector. One the largest and oldest newspaper in the India goes to foreign shores for its website. All the three aspects, i.e. design, workflow solution, and web publishing do not seem to be alien to me. Pick marketing brochure of any IT company, and you can’t miss those three as their capability or expertise.
If indeed our IT companies are a-la-carte of the worldwide IT business, why The Hindu had to go scouting and work with foreign companies? You folks are smart enough to pass of the judgment.
foreign sourcing, HINDU's website, IT business, IT business model, IT innovation in India, outsourcing, Website design
Lack of innovation in product front, is major concern for Indian IT companies. Indian IT Vendors ar mainly focussed on providing low cost services. None of the Tier 1 IT companies ( Infy, TCS, Wipro etc) doesnt have any established products, except one or two, in market to fetch revenue. I agree that Finnacle ( for Infy ) and Bancs (for TCS) are there in market . In fact Bancs is a software developed by some foreign company which TCS took over.Situation is pathetic when we compare it with hundreds of products that IBM offers.It is estimated that revenue alone from license fee of applications of IBM comes around 10 Billion $ per annum , which is double the annual revenue of Tier 1 indian companies
Then where do Indian companies come into play . They come into picture mainly when the application are developed/maintained inhouse. When there is no off the shelf products available which suits the needs of organisations( read clients) .Indian IT vendors will either develop new application or customise existing one, with help of low cost IT talents available.Further the IP of new system will be owned by clients which will make it difficult to IT vendors to use it as seperate product ;-(
Coming back to “The hindu” example. There are already established industry leaders in work flow solution and web publishing system for media verticle. It suits very well for the business of “The Hindu”. Then why should “The Hindu ” go for an indian IT vendor to create something new. Let me put it in this way….. If I need a customised Mercedes Benz , I will better buy one from Show Room and get is remodelled /customised by an efficient agency ( say like Dilip Chhabria). I will never ever go for building a benz from the scratch , even if I can get some near to my home, who has technical knowhow about how to do it
Indian IT vendors has to go a long way ahead to build strong portfolio of products that suits every one( like how IBM does).Only then we will be able to say that we are taking the world with storm
I do not agree that Hindu going in for a “foriegn” IT vendor/s is in anyway a reflection on capabilities of IT companies in India. If “foriegn” companies can outsource their work to India, why can’t Indian companies outsource work to some foriegn IT vendor? Probably they would have got a very good deal from these companies or these companies may have prior experience in designing other news paper sites.
Foreign websites, newspapers and etailers are just way ahead of Indian companies when it comes to the web.
Indian IT Companies have carved out a nice niche in system integration or SI, — and that really is their strength more than anything else.
i used work like a coolie for 12-14 a day. I asked my manager to allow me just two hours a day to do something different (that will be helpful to the company), you know like what many US companies like google do, I asked I will work 8 hours on company project and then 2 hour on my stuff….
guess what, he said we have lots of project to complete and we are short of time, so you better focus on company work, AND i used to get paid only for 8 hours a day job. I waited for 2 years.. and then gave up. It is better to be a truck driver than become IT coolie.
So Manshu, we can beat anybody in this world, only if business culture changes.
I totally agree with Prashant…this can also be the other way round…”Hindu” has that typical Desi mindset that whatever is foreign, will be of superior quality, and “they don’t want to compromise” by giving the project to some Indian company! In fact, looking at their earlier website, and considering that they are an “old” company probably with a lot of old employees, I really doubt the decision making capabilities of their top brass, as far as their web media ventures are concerned…
@Mantra, I think its cliche to talk about blaming Desi mentality.
Instead lets accept the fact that our IT companies have not evolved and they continue to be low cost service providers. I work for an IT company and I can see the lack of vision of what to do next 3 or 5 years. All they talk about is how to grow with same “gheesa pita” parameters like number of people, revenue per employee. There is nothing like, I need to develop this product….
I do not agree with Mantra. I live in pune, and i am seeing the local leading daily Sakaal Papers (multi Crore group), is still struggling to have a stable website. The service providers are Indian, so called leading web designing companies. Simple test i did on Hindu’s paper site & local vendors, It takes 4-5 seconds to load complete front page of local daily. while the Hindu loads in 1.5 seconds..same (1.5 seconds) is the Guardian.co.uk (Both have more or less same interface).
This shows we have a long way to go at par with global competitors
you are sooooo right about this and examples like this are many…..
@Manshu, very true, foreign websites are much more innovative, high quality, and quality content too.
Unless we accept this fact that we lack creative and innovation, we will not change. our business leaders restrict themselves to these gheesa pita strategies.
We are supposedely IT powerhouse, top three earn billions, and we have not plans for competitive OS or even a competitive ERP vendor or a competitive database vendor… e.g. HCL chief goes to US and proclaims US IT graduates are un-employable, HE forgot to mention his company is looking for coolies (like me) and not employees.
Isn’t it surprising that Infosys, TCS, and Wipro have pool of 100000 employees and we cannot come out of a single blockbuster products, AND we keep harping 30+ employee in Microsoft or IBM or any other are indians… what the point…
Their style of working is also very different. They are are very good in getting things done provided they are told what to do. ASK them WHAT/HOW, then you get blank stares. MANY times the argument is its your domain, so tell us what you need and we will figure out how it can be done in cheaper way. THEY lack providing visionary guidance on how to make it a long term success. PLUS these IT companies need to send qualified people to work on outsourced IT project. In my experience they send low skilled folks to have trouble comprehending what customers need.
So I agree with many readers here, indian IT companies lack creativeness, and innovation. They lack “ability to provide direction”.
Hi,
Thank you TIP Guy for this post and others for their comments, overall an interesting read. I find both the views (say represented by Prashanth and Priyanka) valid.
I personally would be more inclined to what Prashanth is saying.
. Also one can notice that many of Indian IT companies are NOW focusing on such other creative, innovative ideas…. at least that what they want to do. Not bad.
1) It is not fair to read too much into HINDU’s decision to choose forign vendor. As said, may be the selected vendor is an authoriy in subject, may be Desi mentality has some role to play or even there are some ‘other’ reasons behind this decision.
2) Indian IT companies do not have many hit products, true. But this may be just because that is not the focus area for them.
3) Why it is not the focus area? As we know they are/were not ready for such big ticket investments in R&D. And there are/were better/simpler ways (you can call it gheesa pita stuff) to earn good money for shareholders (how does that sound?
To me it makes perfect practical sense to concentrate on low hanging fruits first. It is even better if in parallel slowly build the other capabilities by making investment in R&D, etc. Afterall it is not SO EASY to build world class products, it take time, years and decades. So till that time why not earn some dollars/Pounds/Euro?
Also just think for a moment, handful of IT bigshots (Infy guys, Premji, others) without much of capital in hand running after developing ‘products’ for last 20 years… who knows we wouldn’t be talking about them today.
I would say, have pride in what ‘we’ achieved till date and take a part in next revolution by whatever way you can. Nothing will be better than that!
~Cheers
Just wondering if it stuck anyone that this Hindu deal could be too small to be of interest to any one of the biggies. The big companies wont even discuss any deal less than X M$, where X depends on the company & is usually of the order greater than 10 M.
Why just Hindu? Even Bharti outsourced its IT needs of the order of 600M$ to IBM, not any one of the Indian companies. *THEN* these companies woke up to the fact that there are huge deals to be chased down here and not just in US/EMEA.
I think the connection to Indian IT industry, while may have some valid points, misses the real connection to media and the news business.
Let me take a step back – The Hindu website is one that has been very easy to navigate, to reach a section, go through the archives or the search capabilities. The index by state/city, is very good and provides easy access to each section. They were among the first to provdie RSS capability!.
The user experience has always been much superior to any other newspaper site in India. I have been accessing the crossword for the past 13 years and never have a problem getting to it (please try that in the Times of India or other sites) and can easily print a weeks set of crosswords. The user comfort, navigation was always consistently good.
To improve the user experience the logical step is to select experts in the business – those who provide such services to one of the largest news markets in the western world (US, UK). Please check NYtimes or the London times or the Guardian.
So you seek solutions from experts. Do you think this is an IT problem? I think not.
See how cluttered up the Times (used to be) and also the Indian Express. Can you quickly see the news from last week on any site?
It is a media design and user experience improvement and The Hindu would presumably select the experience companies in such matters.
Ravi
top line or bottom line whatever you call it, Indian IT is just a low cost service providers.
You may try to put as many good explanation as you want, fruits or mentality or expertise or experience or not IT related… those are also excuses, and THOSE ARE THE REASONS why these companies cannot get out this daily grind.
There seems to be 2 camps. I am in the camp of manshu/portfolio/Hawk’ish/priyanka. I am fan of yoginder. Yes, I believe we can put as many explanations to as we can. The fact of the matter is we keep chasing and in future we WANT to chase those low hanging fruits. Because it is easy. It is easy dollar conversion. The day dollar goes below 35 all Indian IT companies will be toast. As a disclaimer, I am 52 year old who has worked in big fours. And just quit one week ago from middle management.
Its all about chasing low hanging fruits. It’s a reactive approach. Meaning where are the projects let us chase it. There is no proactive projects, meaning, lets develop this because there is a need (but no clients yet). Such projects get killed because, there is no client to pay for. This is valid for all IT outsourcers. (yes takla is my real life nick name)
Beautiful! Thanks for the interesting post
Wow! Great collection of portfolio with very creative design, Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing this nice post.