A prince who was a bug in the millennium

Rohit Garg

In the year 2006-2007 revenue for Indian software stands at of 22.9 billion USD and if we look a just decade back these figure was at 0.5 billion USD. Infosys being tipped to take over Cap Gemini, the largest European IT Company, are a sign of things to come for this sector.

There are many takers of credit of this remarkable growth like NASSCOM, government and early starters like TCS; but I would like to give main credit to sprit of all Indian professionals who stick to their professions during Y2K bubble burst. To validate this fact let us look back into the history.

Pre Nineties
During this period there were limited option available for 10+2 aspirants and almost everyone was competing to get professional graduation degree into few known institutes (via competition). As the seats are limited so most of aspirants kept applying for these competitions still they reach the age bar (lot of them still do) and every year nation loses thousands of valuable man years from these young talents.

Early Nineties
In the early stages of computers, memory was a valuable resources so most of programs were designed to accommodate only two digit of the year, later even though memory started getting cheaper very year but that legacy of programming still continued. 

During this period software programming was classified as a high-end activity of western countries but still lots of Indian engineers were part of this revolution. These engineers were privileged brain drainers who migrated to western counties, on obvious reasons like money, job opportunity, quality of life etc. 

Mid Nineties
During early nineties companies started realizing that these software are significantly contributing to their top-line, making their process faster, utilizing lesser manpower and reducing margin of error, and hence they wanted to continue using these software even after year 2000. With the huge cost implication on this unavoidable expense, companies started postponing this important decision to subsequent years. 

Y2K bug fixing was one time activity, so companies started engaging third party vendors to supply these resources at their premises instead of hiring them on its own roles. But the immigration quota was limited and onsite cost was increasing, so lot of companies started experimentation of pushing low end work to the offshore engineers who were not lucky to get their visa. 

Late Nineties 
During that period, the demand over took the supply so much that peoples work experience started counting in months and in most cases people were promised future onsite opportunities as there were few takers on offshore option (subjected to visa approval). The skill level requirement was no longer limited to selected degree courses in IITs. Any graduates who had potential and inclination to learn software programming, was welcomed to jump into the race. Training institutes like NIIT and Aptech played a vital role in providing industry specific training and scaling supply. 

And the Y2K bubble burst 
At this stage majority of Indian IT companies were deriving their revenue from Y2K projects, and rate of new Y2K assignments were considerably dropping, there was desperate need for find alternatives plan for these IT professionals. Smaller companies were getting winded but leading IT companies continues to put investment of sales of non Y2K projects. 

During the last phase of Y2K, IT industry has also witnessed a short life cycle of dot com bubble. During this period there was mad rush of peoples to make their first million after hearing roaring success of Amazon dot com. If we leave aside the unrealistic valuation, the dot com bubble created a pool of young entrepreneurs who can risk their career (lot of them were in their twenties) and ready to win their customers and investors on their entrepreneur and marketing skills. 

Recall
Y2K bubble created an alternative opportunity for graduates to adopt IT as their core area, and success rate in this sector far more realistic. This success created an unparallel scale in this field, which continuously supplied quality intellects in IT industry for coming years.

The Y2K bubble burst created maharajas like Narayan Murthy and Aziz Premji were not jittered by prediction from economists and analyst (who predicted sorrow state of affaires for the companies engaged in Y2K). But the princes were Indian IT professionals who continued to deliver their level best even being under constant threat for their livelihood after Y2K.


(The author was in IT industry during Y2K period and can be reached at rohit.gg@gmail.com)