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Records the wanderings of a wordsmith
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Saturday, July 26, 2003
Indian Railways's Web site for booking tickets has become the largest e-commerce site in Asia outside Japan. A daily turnover of 40 lakh rupees is not bad in a country, where only 1.5 percent of people have computers.
The site in the limelight is http://www.irctc.co.in
While fashionable business school theories are floundering in the Internet market, here is a humble Web site that is making a silent, slow but steady progress.
It would do Railways and the people a lot of good if the giant organization (world's largest employer with 1.6 million employees, second largest railway system with 7,100 stations, 62,800 kilometers, 430 millions of traffic and 4.8 billion passengers a year) minimizes the accident rate of its trains.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 10:02 AM
July had been a month of announcements.. Each morning a U.S firm was announcing investment and hiring plans in India, many of them in Bangalore. After reporting many of them, I almost grew tired of such announcements and let one or two pass me by.
But it is good news that jobs are plenty. At the same time, salaries are not sky high, which is also good in a way.. High salaries invariably lead to an unsustainable position from where companies fall faster in times of downturn. More jobs are lost if salaries had been unreasonably high previously.
The current trend in India's software industry is this. Companies are getting more business and more customers are turning India's way. But software billing rates are lower than what they used to be. This again is good for the same reason that moderate salaries are good. It is sustainable in the long run.
The outcry against outsourcing to India seems to be slowing a bit in the U.S. Good for them.
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