"It's IBM's nightmare," reported the American business magazine Fortune. In a conference room in Bangalore, consultants and engineers at the software company Wipro were redesigning the 'consumer experience' for a US retail chain to make it state-of-the-art. Reports the magazine, Wipro's general manager for retail solutions was leading a group asking all kinds of detailed questions, "Should sales clerks carry handheld transaction devices or stand at cash registers? Which merchandise should be tracked electronically? How much information needs to be in the database to ensure that discount promotions don't last longer than necessary?"
All this would be the stuff of bad dreams for 'Big Blue' because increasingly its US client companies are turning to Wipro and other software development companies in India for solutions. Indeed, lean and hungry IT companies like Wipro, TCS and Infosys are already invading IBM's turf. These companies are part of the wave of 'multinationalisation' that is sweeping the Indian corporate world.
Wipro's challenge to the mighty IBM is only the latest element of an unfolding saga, which is likely to redesign the global business landscape. In particular, the multinational corporations of China and India are swooping down on the playing field of the Western transnational corporations and in many cases running away with the ball. These Asian MNCs have drawn a great deal of attention of late, due to their direct impact on the market traditionally monopolized by Western MNCs. To trace how the large Chinese and Indian companies have arrived at this point, it is important to trace the evolution of the multinationals in Asia.
Multinationals of Asia