Infosys head N R Narayana Murthy (left) and Nasscom chairman Dr Ganesh Natarajan present Lyonchen with a token of appreciation from Indian IT leaders

29 November, 2008 - Around 30 leading Information Technology giants from the global IT capital of Bangalore who are in Thimphu to hold their annual strategy meeting are also looking at ‘investment possibilities’ in Bhutan.

The IT leaders said that Bhutan could play host to an array of possibilities like Data Centers Operation, Disaster Recovery Center, Business Process Outsourcing, Software Development Center.

The gathering also witnessed the official launch of the NIIT center of excellence located at the campus of the Royal University of Bhutan to train 1000 IT students over the next two years.

Infosys Board Chairman and IT leader, N.R Narayana Murthy also offered 100 seats in the Infosys institute in Banglore for ‘Intensive Training’ of Bhutanese students for six months.

Speaking to Kuensel, N.R Narayana Murthy said, “We are looking at Bhutan as a good destination for investment”. He said that this was an initial reconnaissance trip and they had the privilege of meeting important people and would also be visiting a few place. “That is how you start building a relationship, once you start appreciating the country and good things in the country, possibilities start coming before your eyes,” he added.

On the chances of a small country like Bhutan being an IT destination, he said that chances are good and the reason was that Infosys itself had started with seven people but was now worth 4.7 to 4.8 billion dollars.

The Chairman of NASSCOM, Dr Ganesh Natarajan said, “Apart from formulating our long term IT strategy what we do is visit new countries who could potentially be partners to India.”

“I think if we can work together with Bhutanese companies or even help Bhutan to set up an ICT industries,” he added.

He said that they could look for opportunity to set up a 500 to 600 seater BPOs and generate employment and could train some of the 13,000 people who enter the job market every year in Bhutan. He said that given Bhutan’s surplus power, it could be a data center for a lot of Asian countries, and all IT Indian companies. Data Centers are places where large power intensive computers are set up with the conditions of power, connectivity and stability.

He said that Bhutan would need to have 3,000-4,000 well skilled and highly employable professionals and, like in India they should be working in companies abroad and bring business back to Bhutan.

He said that for it to happen, Bhutan’s landlocked status was not a disadvantage, but that Bhutan would need good broad band connectivity sand make sure that the IT service are reliable and secure.

NASSCOM President Som Mittal said, “It needs to be a step by step process and there are ideas in how we can help in training, putting in some curriculum in the university and also see if Bhutan can be a base for data center and also BPO possibilities.”

Department of information and technology’s Tenzin Choeda said that the meeting was a choice between Mauritius and Bhutan and the government convinced them to come here. “We’re looking at IT as an industry that is yet to be tapped and these people will have ideas and international standing and even if one of them comes, it will lead to the development of the IT industry as rest will follow”.

NASSCOM’s former Chairman Kiran Karnik, pointed out some advantages in Bhutan for IT. “The youth are talented with good English, hard working and motivated. Some time in the future, we could set up BPOs and business services, which requires good telecom connectivity.” He said that the biggest long-term possibility are data centers and these could take 2 to 5 years to materialize.

Lyonchhen Jigmi Y Thinley welcomed the delegation at an official banquet and requested the delegates to invest in Bhutan on the basis of it’s peaceful and stable environment, clean energy good laws that could further be developed and a growing pool of talent. He said that Bhutan was creating an enabling environment for the development of IT and that the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also assured him of his cooperation.