Murthy is also unsure whether America's pain will be India's gain. The conventional thinking is that Indian companies will stand to benefit because of the slowdown in the U.S. Economy. If they do spend, then it's very likely that they would look at India much more seriously than they have in the past. Meanwhile, another former Nasdaq darling from Asia, Creative Technology, is finding a different way to cope. After reporting its first quarterly loss since 1996 this year, the world's leading soundcard maker has made cost cutting a painful necessity, starting with a ten percent cut in its global workforce.
Times are tough.
So I think people accepted it well. Such belt-tightening comes as sales of Creative's lucrative Soundblaster products was hit by the weak PC market, and the company's internet investments sank when the dotcoms came crashing. But Sim is pretty stoic about the whole experience, despite the company's 75 million dollar investment write-down. The 75 million dollars have to be taken in perspective, over the course of our two year investment strategy, we made 120 million dollars. So we still made over 40 million dollars.