After victory speech, IT firms hope Trump will build bridges
NEW DELHI/BENGALURU: US President-elect Donald Trump’s speech post his win on Wednesday has made Indian software exporters more optimistic. They now hope he will build bridges between the two countries and not enforce stricter labour movement laws as he promised during the poll campaign.
In his speech, Trump did not speak specifically about any country. Trump said, “I mean that very sincerely. Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.”
Shivendra Singh, global trade development head at Nasscom, said “We are happy with what the president-elect is saying, to play the role of a unifier. We hope that as an astute businessman, he will work towards promoting strategic bilateral trade and shared interest between the two countries.”
Singh said over the last four years, India IT companies have invested over $2 billion in the US and created 411,000 jobs in the US.
During the long drawn and bitter campaign, Trump ran against Democrat candidate and former first lady and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, he spoke about bringing jobs lost to China and India back to the US.
All major IT companies, including TCS, Infosys and Cognizant, have indicated growth for the rest of the year will be muted at best, with Infosys and Cognizant even revising the revenue guidance for the full year to a little less than 10%.
In October, Nasscom president R Chandrasekhar said on the basis of second quarter results of leading IT companies, the overall revenue growth forecast for the industry may be brought down to 9% from 10-12%. Such a revision has not been done yet.
But Nasscom’s optimism is not shared by all. Arup Roy, research director, Gartner, said, “Indian IT sector must now brace for further troubled times ahead.”