By Hardev Sanotra
Santa Clara (California), June 7 (IANS) India has turned out to be not only a key development centre for software major CA Technologies' products but also an important hub for innovation, according to two of its top officials.
"We see an amazing venture talent and depth and breadth in India," said Ayman Sayed, the company's President and Chief Product Officer, adding that for a country which has about 20 per cent of the world's population, it produces almost one-third of the total number of software engineers.
In a future when there will be shortage of such engineers -- as is already been felt with non-technological companies hiring more engineers than tech ones -- the country's significance would only grow, Sayed noted.
"We are very excited about the country. A number of our products are planned and developed in India at our Hyderabad and Bengaluru centres.
"It is significant for us, for both the scale of products and the revenue it can generate for the company," the CA executive told IANS, answering queries from a small group of journalists whom he met on the sidelines of the "Built to Change Summit" here.
For Chief Technology Officer Otto Berkes, India remains a "primary source of innovation" even as the country houses the company's largest development centre.
"India is absolutely strategic for us and we make, and would continue to make, great investments in building that capability," Berkes said.
With a turnover of over $4 billion, CA Technologies is one of the world's largest independent software companies.
Sayed said that new technologies keep on flowing out of India and informed that a "significant portion" of its predictive analytics engine "Jarvis" had been developed in Bengaluru.
"Our entire payment security business and risk analytic network evolved for our India operations," Sayed informed.
India a potentially large market as the country's economy, he said, had been doing very well. "The country is rapidly transforming and we continue to see a higher level of opportunity of doing business there," Sayed noted.
According to Berkes, the aim at CA had been to create the right conditions.
"The key for innovation to happen is to provide the right environment for it. You cannot force or mandate it. I think that's what we are doing in our centres in India. We intentionally created the right environment to support and allow innovation to flourish," he emphasised.
Berkes also informed that its Accelerator programme, which is an incubation programme for ideas which could be turned into startups, would likely come to India in the near future.
The programme which started in North America had seen it being adopted at CA offices in Europe of late. "We want to make sure it achieves a certain level of maturity before we expand it globally. I am certain that over time there will be incubation in India also," Berkes said.
The Accelerator programme invites ideas internally and then incubates those which have a chance of being turned into startups. The company provides the manpower and investment to take it to maturity. Not all ideas turn out to be significant.
According to Berkes, one out of 10 ideas reach a level where they could be turned into possible startups.
The person providing the idea and taking it to maturity stands to gain monetarily. Apart from spot bonuses, a percentage-based compensation is given.
"The compensation is significant, but, of course, it does not match the returns of a unicorn. But then a vast majority of startups do not become unicorns," said Berkes.
(Hardev Sanotra is in Santa Clara at the invitation of CA Technologies. He can be reached at hardev.sanotra@ians.in)
