BENGALURU: India was one of the fastest growing geographies for IBM in 2017, continuing a trend that started a few years ago. IBM India’s revenue grew by 8.6% in reported currency (5% in constant currency) in the year.Only Mexico and Spain grew faster among the major countries. China declined by 10% in constant currency. Many other geographies also declined, including the US, UK, Germany and Japan. India has been called out during quarterly earnings calls over the past two-three years as one of the best performing markets.
In 2016, IBM India grew by 5.2% in reported currency and 10% in constant currency (which adjusts for currency fluctuations). The company’s good performance here has come when globally it shrank. After hitting a peak revenue of $107 billion in 2011, IBM has steadily declined, and touched $79 billion last year, as it sought to readjust to the dramatic changes in the technology world by getting rid of much of its hardware businesses, and shifting to cloudbased software platforms.
In India though, revenue rose, sometimes sharply. It was Rs 23,005 crore in 2015-16 and Rs 32,325 crore, or approximately $5 billion, in 2016-17. That means India accounts for over 6% of IBM’s revenue. In export IT services, India is perhaps IBM’s biggest operation.
India has IBM’s biggest employee base — an estimated 1,30,000 of the overall 3,80,000. And a good proportion of them are in the IT services business that competes with those like TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Accenture
