Indian Software Capital: Sociography of a New Entrepreneurial Elite

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study Indian software capital considered as the nexus of IT companies and their top managers. For this purpose, we have conducted a Multi Correspondence Analysis of a set of data collected for the first hundred IT firms listed on the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai in 2012. We address three main research questions. Firstly, what is the socio-demographic profile of these entrepreneurs, secondly, what is the shareholding pattern of these companies and their position on the IT market and, lastly, what are the differences between these IT companies and traditional business groups? Although the managers are highly educated and share the same technical culture, the results show a clear division of software capital in 3 clusters. First, the Multinational companies, which are the oldest firms and the biggest in terms of manpower and global revenue, are opposed to a second group of IT companies founded or managed by executives who are mainly graduates, and whose activities are oriented towards the domestic market; lastly, a third group of companies run by highly-qualified managers (with MBAs) combined characters of clusters 1 and 2, but are smaller companies more dependent on the stock-market. In the software industry, the family-business model, which is not specifically related to the merchant high castes, is well represented, except for the Indian MNCs, but with some qualifications.