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19 July 2006
Universal Cyber Infoway ranked in the top regional IT/ITES firms - shares the podium with IT giants including Infosys and Dell

Excerpts from Indian Express, Chandigarh (20 July 2006)

Six regional IT companies received the Software Exports Award, instituted by the Software Technologies Parks of India (STPI), at the curtain raiser of e-Revolution 2006 this evening.

While Infosys Technologies, Quark Media House and Second Foundation India bagged the top three awards in the Software Exports Category, Dell International Services, IDS Infotech and Universal Cyber Infoway were the winners in the IT/ITES Exports Category. Lalit Sharma, Advisor to the UT Administrator, gave away the awards.

Anuj Mahajan, (CEO, Universal Cyber Infoway), who started his career helping his brother with his cyber cafe ‘Login’ in 1999, said, ‘‘We were fourth last year and third this time. We aim to be the top company by next year.’’

Universal Cyber Infoway, which started in 2002 with just 20 people, has the strength of around 250.

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Excerpts from THE NEW YORK TIMES (20 November 2003)

CHANDIGARH JOURNAL
Sleepy City Has High Hopes, Dreaming of High Tech
By DAVID ROHDE

CHANDIGARH, India — Thirty years after a "green revolution" turned the plains around this small city into India's breadbasket, a cadre of ambitious government officials, pricey consultants and local high technology entrepreneurs is trying to accomplish something almost as ambitious — transforming this sleepy farm state capital into the "technology hub of northern India."

"Chandigarh," glossy brochures declare to prospective investors, "the city with brains."

Chandigarh was designed and built by the Swiss-born modernist Le Corbusier in the 1950's as a replacement for the former Punjab capital, Lahore, which had been absorbed into Pakistan after partition. Now a city of 900,000 people, it is the joint capital of India's two most prosperous farming states and one of half a dozen cities and states furiously competing for the call centers and software parks that American and Indian companies are opening across India.

As tens of thousands of service jobs continue to flow to India from the United States and Europe, small cities like Chandigarh offer even lower labor costs than India's "first tier" technology hubs, places like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay and Gurgaon, outside New Delhi.

Officials from Bangalore disputed that claim, saying the city's talent pool remained vast. But businessmen here said that wages were far lower in smaller cities like Chandigarh, where a starting call center operator makes roughly 7,000 rupees, or $150, a month. A starting worker in a "first tier" would be paid as much as twice that, they said.

At the center of Chandigarh's effort is Vivek Atray, a wiry, smooth-talking 36-year-old electrical engineer, who is the city's new director of information technology. In terms reminiscent of the American Internet boom, he breathlessly predicts an explosion in jobs here.

"We expect 5,000 new jobs in the next six months to one year," he said, adding that he expected five new call centers to open. On top of the three that started up in the last 18 months.

In the end, whether Chandigarh can persuade these companies to open call centers here may depend on young men and women like Varun Sood, a short, boyish 20-year-old college student. To a business owner, Chandigarh offers 50,000 college students like him for possible employment, what Mr. Atray's brochures call a "ready availability of trained manpower."

Dressed in jeans, a stylish green shirt and baseball cap on a recent evening, he said he was eager to make extra cash at what he sees as a hip and exciting job. Young, open-minded and curious about the outside world, he talks cheerfully about a task many Americans might find anesthetizing: working all night cold-calling people in the United States.

"It's good," said Mr. Sood, who adopts an American accent and persona over the phone and uses the name "Boris." (After his favorite tennis player, Boris Becker.) "You get to speak to a lot of people outside your country."

He speaks English well, thanks to a strong local education system that includes a leading university, engineering college and medical school.

His 28-year-old boss, Anuj Mahajan, represents another asset in Chandigarh: local Indian entrepreneurs flush with cash. After traveling to Britain, the United States and parts of India to study methods and scout for customers, Mr. Mahajan, the son of a local textile mill owner, used family money to open the Kalldesk call center in September 2002.

A year or so later, he has quadrupled his work force to 80 people from 20, finished renovations on a modern, stylish office and is planning to expand to 200 workers. "It's all family owned," he said. "We borrowed a little, but we've paid them back."