Why Inc. India 500 CEOs are smiling

—Deepika Sharma and Pooja Kothari

In the second half of 2008, when the global economic downturn hit India, everyone assumed we were headed for another Great Depression. Many observers cautioned that things were not as bad as they looked. Then, early this year, a similar sentiment echoed across corporate corridors, when people warned that things aren’t as rosy as everyone’s expecting them to be.

We, at Inc. India, decided to put that to test. We wondered if businesses really felt as confident as they were saying. We checked with Inc. India 500 CEOs, an elite club who are building the leaders of tomorrow. The vast majority of respondents said they are planning to hire again—some had already been hiring in the past six months.

Their optimism isn’t surprising—after all, they are the fastest-growing medium-sized enterprises in the country. Even if you discount that, the trend is clear. India Inc. is looking ahead and planning for better times. More than 30 of the 50 companies who responded to our questionnaire said they were “very optimistic” about the year ahead.

The Inc. India 500 leaders are not alone in feeling good about the future. There are signs that other business leaders are also starting to look at the bright side. Business confidence was at a two-year high, as evident from a survey conducted by National Council of Applied Economic Research and MasterCard Worldwide in January. Another survey, conducted by global staffing services firm, Manpower, had shown that India was “the most optimistic nation in terms of hiring plans for the next three months and the recruitment pace is expected to return to the pre-recession level” in 2010. The survey further stated that India had rated the highest among 35 countries on a measure of recruiting plans for the first quarter of 2010.

For many Inc. India 500 CEOs, the need to hire is already evident. Says Arvind Thakur, chief executive, NIIT Technologies, which was ranked 51st in the Inc. India 500 list: “The worst is behind us and we are embarking on new areas.” His company, which develops software for education, has hired more than 25 employees in the past six months, and plans to add another 50 or more in the next six.

Says Rajesh Mittal, managing director, GreenPly: “We plan to add more people to our marketing team so we can build a distribution network in rural India.” His company, which manufactures and exports plywood and laminates, has been growing at a healthy 25 per cent and expects to maintain that rate in the next fiscal. He plans to add up to 25 people in the next six months at his Rs 630-crore firm.

In fact, more than 90 per cent of those surveyed had drawn up plans to hire more employees in the near future; of these, 64 per cent said they will add more than 25 employees. Only four companies out of 50 had no plans to hire any employees.

Even big guns, like TCS, one of the leading software companies in the country, have announced plans to start hiring again in 2010. Newspaper reports suggested it plans to hire 30,000 in the current financial year.

It isn’t just hiring that shows the optimistic mood. A majority of our respondents said they planned to increase their budgets for marketing in 2010-11. An overwhelming 96 per cent said they planned to spend money on training and 92 per cent on technology in this financial year.

Their willingness to open up the purse strings only goes to show that they foresee good times ahead.

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