Come to Chile, Castillo tells B’lore IT
Think Nearshoring. Think Chile. Well, if Mexico rolled out the red carpet last year, this time, it is Chile’s turn to do so and make a pitch for Indian IT Inc explore the Chilean route to address Latin American, Europe, Asian and the US markets.
With recession forcing IT companies to rework their pro-US stance and derisk themselves, its offer could not have come any sooner. As part of its ambitious Digitized Nation 2010 plan, Chile, the Country Partner in the Bangalore IT.Biz 2009, has come calling to India’s Silicon Capital to offer itself as nearshoring destination of choice. Speaking to Deccan Herald Chilean Ministry of Economy Head of Invest Chile — Corfo (Chilean Economic Development Agency), Mario Castillo said Bangalore, as India’s Knowledge & Technology Capital and its stupendous strides in IT is a clear benchmark for us to invite companies to Chile. Chile, he said, offers itself as a technology platform for those planning to launch their investment projects as part of global expansion.
Stating that Bangalore IT majors , could explore Chile as another their destination of choice as part of their global delivery model. They can set up operations in areas of shared service centres, call centres, technical support centres, software development centres et al. He said they could also provide Chile training and intellectual expertise to address its local and domestic concerns.
B2B meetings
Incidentally, the Chilean team, which visited Infosys Campus in Bangalore and IIIT-Bangalore at Whitefield has lined up series of B2B meetings with several small and medium IT enterprises to woo them.
Association of IT Companies (ACTI), Chilean version of India’s Nasscom, President Miguel Perez, Industrial Engineering Programme Andres Bellos University Director Ignacio Andrada said ACTI was working closely with Nasscom and exploring possibility of opening up representative office in Bangalore. They said already Indian IT companies such as TCS, Polaris, Evalueserve, UST Global, Orion and Avastagen have their presence in Chile and more such proposals were in the pipeline from other players. Chile employed 20,000 in ICT industry and its ICT export in 2008 was US$ 844 million. The Chilean Digital Agenda, a public-private-academic partnership comprising of 34 initiatives across six action areas: access, e-government, education and training, ICT industries, businesses and legal and regulatory framework, offers Indian technology companies immense scope to participate in its national programme.
Further, with the total value of Chilean domestic spending on IT products and services expected to surpass US$3 billion by 2012 he said, is incentive enough to look at Chile as prospective growth market. The main destinations for Chilean global services exports are South America (50.4 per cent), US (21.1 per cent), and Europe (18.9 per cent), he said, observing investment opportunities include BPO, ITO, KPO & IPO streams.
