From studying the economic strength of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) firms in India to analysing the background of the person at the helm of these firms, a French senior sociologist has attempted to take a closer look into the sociography of the major companies of the ICT sector in India.
Roland Lardinois, Director of Research, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris, was at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) in Puducherry to present his study of the 94 big IT companies listed at the National Stock Exchange.
Mr. Lardinois told the The Hindu that over the past twenty years the field of entrepreneurship in India has been transformed by the emergence of a new sector of activities associated with the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). He had initiated Indo-French joint research project on the sociology of Indian software engineers for a period from 2009 to 2013.
In his study ‘Sociography of the Indian Entrepreneurs in the ICT sector in India’ attempts to address questions like what are the firms of the ICT sector? How old are they? What is their economic strength? In which specific technical sector do they operate? Who are the founders and directors of these companies? What are their family and educational backgrounds? What is the structure of the capital of these companies? Is their capital still in the hands of the founders and their family or is it controlled by private or public funds?
“I collected information on the company — their funding, when they went public, the structure of shareholding or the shareholding pattern. All this is available on the company website since all are listed companies from the annual activity report of the company,” he said.
Taking a closer look
Mr. Lardinois stated that the study also analyses the family and caste background of the CEO or managers of the IT companies. “I have collected biographical information regarding their founders and directors (about 130 persons selected) from the annual activity reports of each company, supplemented by others sources (biographies, interviews) when needed. I intend to present a statistical analysis of these data (using a Multi Correspondence Analysis) in order to sketch out the social space of the ICT entrepreneurs in India,” he said.
The study revealed that at least 55 per cent of the managers of ICT firms in India have a Bachelor degree in Engineering (B.E), 13 per cent have completed B.Sc. This implies 68 per cent of the managers or CEOs have a degree in science and technology. The third group has 24 per cent of respondents who have completed bachelor of commerce. Only 30 per cent have obtained a MBA from abroad.
30 per cent Brahmins
Mr. Lardinois stated that the study also looked into the caste background of the managers and found that at least 30 per cent of the managers were Brahmins, 16 per cent were from the merchant high caste, 23 per cent from the non merchant high caste, 27 per cent were from other castes and the remaining 4 per cent of is unknown.
He added that the study would be published in the end of this year or beginning of 2017.
