Kiran Karnik

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) will soon appoint a public relations firm in the US to tackle the negative perception of jobs getting outsourced to India. On a similar vein, Nasscom will also use the services of a PR firm in the UK to promote the India brand there. The organisation decided on this move in a bid to protect its market share in the two important markets, which account for over 70 percent of India’s software exports.

Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said, “We have short-listed a few firms and will be deciding on them in a few weeks.” The US accounted for over 65 percent of the market for the Indian IT industry and it was necessary to protect the Indian brand in that country, he added.

Nasscom also plans to set up a regional office in Kolkata, which will also be a nodal office for co-ordinating its initiatives to attract IT-related investments in the North-Eastern states. Karnik said the share of the eastern region in India’s overall software exports was only 4 percent, but efforts are on to ensure that this increases to 15 percent by 2008.