The recent news item about Democrat senator Charles Schumer calling Infosys a chop shop has sparked off a lively debate and understandably drawn a lot of comments from the Indian IT industry. Clearly, political compulsions and an economy that is taking its time to recover are triggering such statements.

This is ironic from an Indian IT industry stand point though. During its heydays ( mid nineties to mid 2000’s), the word global delivery was merely a euphemism for large and multiple development centers in India, for most companies, including the large ones. Likewise, the proportion of global talent was not very significant. In the last few years however, the scale players especially have gone about globalizing their operations more systematically, hired locals, especially from the US, which continues to be the most attractive market notwithstanding the recession, and begun to behave like a global corporation, albeit slowly.

This episode underscores the need for Indian companies and industry associations to focus more and more on brand building to communicate strongly the value being delivered by the global outsourcing industry.

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Winning awards and being recognized by industry associations is one of the most cost effective yet creidble ways to build a company’s brand.

The interesting thing is that you have acquired no new capabilities, but customers and peers look at you differently! An independent validation of your capabilities makes you a “safer” company to work with, and also makes customers proud of their association with you.

To that extent, it baffles me whymore companies do not use this avenue more. One reason is perhaps the lack of confidence in your own ability to win- but our take is, you need to make a start, and if you approach the effort methodically you may be pleasantly surprised on the outcome.

Take our own case- we applied for the International Marcomm Awards last year, sent three entries, and won three awards, including one in the highest category- Platinum.

This year, we sent only one entry ( lack of time to identify and send more entries being the ostensible reason), and I am happy to say, we won the Platinum award yet again.

I can vouch for the fact that these awards have definitely increased our credibility in the eyes of our customers and prospects. What is more, it is a great shot in the arm for the Prayag team and reinforces our belief that we are up there with the best.

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The recent news on Steve Jobs’ illness and absence from work, and the consequent adverse impact it has had in the market on Apple’s future leads us to ponder a very important question on the merits and demerits of personality led brand building.

Let us start with Apple itself- a brand that is synonymous with  its legendary CEO- the challenge they now face is that the market is not convinced about an Apple without Jobs- as someone said- it is hard to imagine an apple without its core! Which begs the question, should a multi-multi billion dollar company like Apple, which is over 3 decades old, still have its brand linked so strongly to its founder?

The issue is, whenever you have a charismatic leader, it makes sense to build your brand around him or her- Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy are examples cited often of personalities who played a significant role in building the brands of their respective organizations. But what these two did right is to choose a time to step back and allow for an institutionalization of the brand building process.

So, that is an important lesson that companies can learn from this episode. Use your CEO to build the brand, but pick a time to broaden the approach.

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