Japan's hour of crisis: IT firms see no impact on business

Hyderabad: City-based IT companies said that the on-going nuclear catastrophe in Japan would have little or no impact on their business. While the country's top three software exporters namely TCS, Infosys Technologies and Wipro have offered to evacuate employees from the trouble-hit Japan, home grown companies including Mahindra Satyam (MSat) and Infotech Enterprises Ltd said a majority of the employees operating out of their Tokyo facilities are locals.

'We have over 100 employees operating out of our facility in Tokyo. A majority of them are locals and we have set up helpline facilities at all our Asia Pacific facilities to help them out. As of now, there has been no problem,' MSat's company spokesperson told. Similarly, Infotech too said since most of its employees are non-Indian, the company do not foresee a reason to press the panic button by evacuating Indians from the capital city of Japan.

According to estimates, Japan currently contributes about 2 per cent of the country's total software exports. Japanese authorities have been trying to prevent a nuclear catastrophe after the earthquake and tsunami damaged four of six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power complex and led to a sharp increase in radiation levels.

'The safety of our employees is our top priority. We are ready to relocate our Indian employees and their families as well as move our local Japanese employees and their families to other locations of safety. We are also engaged with customers to see how they can be supported,' said a spokesperson, TCS.

Meanwhile, exports from pharmaceutical and automobile component manufacturing companies from the state to Japan are likely to slow down over the due course of time. 'Currently, pharma companies export herbals and APIs to formulation companies in Japan. There's no impact as of now, but we'll have to wait and see how it will affect exports in the long-run,' said P V Appaji, executive director, Pharmexcil.

He said that the industry body is awaiting clarity on whether the forthcoming international pharmaceutical conference to be held in Japan next month would be on schedule. 'We have to wait and see the macro economic impact since Japan is the third largest economy in the world. There could be a drop in demand for raw material and prices for now, but once the country starts re-building, exports would increase,' said Jayadeva Galla, chairman, CII AP chapter and managing director, Amara Raja Batteries Ltd.

Currently, Amara Raja ships about 100,000 to 300,000 batteries every quarter to Japan but the company said it won't foresee any impact on exports.