Aparita

The Toronto Star

Sabahat Qureshi captures images of Gerrard St. ‘We were all in-between, not white, not Indian.’

APARITA BHANDARI

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Photography has always been a part of Sabahat Qureshi’s life.

One of his earliest memories is that of his father showing him the magic of developing pictures in the darkroom of the family-run photo shop on Gerrard St.

“He’d pull me in,” recalls Qureshi, smiling. “He’d take this blank piece of paper and submerge it into this water. The first time I saw it, I was confused. Then, these pictures started appearing, like magic.

“It was just someone’s passport photo, but I thought it was awesome.”

For Qureshi, 28, it’s been a long journey from the small shop in Little India to his own studio on Polson St. And along the way, he has captured his experiences the way he knows best - through photos.

“I want to have an archive, a record of what goes around me, in my neighbourhood,” he says. “And the Gerrard India Bazaar is my home.”

The Qureshi family immigrated to Canada in 1978. While his father spent his days working in a factory, his mother ran the photo shop. The family lived at the back of the store for a year before they bought a house in the neighbourhood.

Even though there were only a handful of Indian businesses in the Gerrard St. area at the time, there was a strong sense of community, says Qureshi. He has a deep voice that trails off as he takes another puff of his cigarette.

“There used to be lot of racist incidents. Stuff like window-breaking, fighting, or some sort of violence,” he says.

“But as the bazaar got bigger, everyone got to know each other. There was respect. We watched out for each other.”

The neighbourhood was a special place for the kids who lived in the stores run by their parents, he recalls.

“On the weekends, we worked for our folks. Everything revolved around the bazaar. In the summertime, we’d get yelled at for rolling tires down the street or kicking balls in the alleys.

“My friend Bobby’s mum always dragged us by the ear and had us make trays of laddoos (Indian sweets) for some wedding.”

For Qureshi, his photography is a way for him to try to understand the two seemingly different cultures he grew up with - the Indian and the Canadian.

“We were all in-between, not white, not Indian,” he says. “We didn’t understand certain rituals and customs, like why we couldn’t eat beef on certain days when there was a McDonald’s right around the corner.”

By the time he was 12, Qureshi would take turns with his siblings sitting at the counter of his parents’ store, taking passport pictures. When he was 16, he was attending weddings, dressed in a borrowed suit, ready to snap photos.

“My father told me, `Just to shoot and advance the film,’” he says, laughing. “But I learned a lot of basic stuff.”

After studying theatre for a year, Qureshi decided what he really wanted to do was be a photographer. He decided to learn the art by assisting and apprenticing with any studio that would take him. His hard work paid off and he went on to work with such Toronto photographers as Bert Bell and Philip Rostron.

In 1997, he landed a job as an assistant at the studio of prominent advertising photographer Shin Sugino.

“People told me that I had slim to none chances of getting in Shin’s studio,” says Qureshi. “But I would work full days assisting (other) photographers and then show up at Shin’s.”

He is nothing if not persistent, Qureshi says.

“I come from a blue-collar family. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to work hard.”

At Sugino’s studio, the young photographer had a chance to learn the finer points of the art. A year later, Sugino suggested Qureshi go out on his own. Qureshi soon set up a studio in the family store.

Like many other stores on Gerrard St., his parents shared the space, in their case with Image Boutique, a clothing store run by his aunt. So he moved his “studio” to the back of the store.

“I wanted to have a studio like Shin,” says Qureshi, laughing. “I couldn’t do that. So I just made a small black box for my studio and did my work there.”

Much of Qureshi’s work is commercial photography, working with clients like Barnes and Noble, Cargo cosmetics and Dell Computers. He has also shot for magazines such as Shift and Wedding Bells.

“Usually, I would pick up my assignment, shoot it and hand it back. But every now and again, some clients would come looking for me.

“Like someone from J.C. Penney would fly in from Texas and come stand in front of Image Boutique and scratch their heads. When I’d come running in from the back of the store, they’d look surprised. But I would get the work done.”

For the past year and half, Qureshi has worked from his spacious studio near the Docks.

It is a study in minimalism, with white walls offset by a large black leather couch. A vase of curly bamboo sits on a side table. A large, orange cloth lies on the floor, surrounded by photography equipment.

“I’m shooting some shoes,” he says, picking up a pair. “The orange picks up the colour in this pair.”

Despite his burgeoning career, Qureshi still finds time to make regular visits back to his old neighbourhood on Gerrard St.

“I go back and take pictures, or I get some of the kids to help me out,” he says. “They work in my studio, assist me sometimes.

“I made it out of the neighbourhood. But I remember growing up confused, unsure. And when the time comes, I return the favour.”

The Toronto Star, [06/02/2003]

It’s the latest twist on tech outsourcing. Satyam sets up Canadian operation.

Special to the Star

For someone who’s been in Canada for a little over two months, Sanjay Tugnait has settled in rather well. He’s still getting used to the little things, like Toronto’s temperamental weather, and the coffee.

“It’s too strong for me,” he smiles, easing back in his company digs at First Canadian Place. “I have to run down and get myself a mochaccino.”

Tugnait is the country manager for Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (satyam.com), a global consulting and IT services based company based in India. Satyam is India’s fourth largest technology-based services company, whose competitors include the likes of Infosys Technologies Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services. Satyam’s roster of clients includes more than 270 global firms - among them, four Fortune 10 and 76 Fortune 500 companies.

Satyam was started up more than a decade ago by current chairman Ramalinga Raju, 46, whose family owned a small textile and construction business in the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh. But the tech company soon left the family business behind in terms of growth. For the quarter ending March 31, 2002, Satyam’s revenue grew 12 per cent from the previous quarter to $343.4 million (U.S.).

Tugnait is heading Satyam’s newly created global development centre in Toronto, the latest in a series of global development centres in India, the U.S., the U.K., the Middle East, Japan, Singapore and Australia. In doing so, Satyam has joined companies such as Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. in increasing India’s IT presence in Canada.

While the Infosys global development centre opened in Toronto in 2000, Wipro opened its global development centre in Windsor in 2002.

Satyam’s Toronto operations were underway early this year and Tugnait’s schedule is already chock-a-block full of appointments.

“Canada is an extremely important market for us,” says Tugnait. “We are very excited about expanding our market to North America. There is a definite attraction in that.

“Also in terms of building an alternate disaster recovery site and providing business continuity to our clients, especially for our U.S. clients, Canada offers great incentive,” he adds.

Currently, U.S. clients constitute 67 per cent of Satyam’s international clients. Canada, in comparison, makes for a much smaller percentage. But Canadian companies, especially in the manufacturing and financial services sector, are a great potential for Satyam.

Traditionally, technology service companies such as Satyam have operated out of India. The modus operandi has been to negotiate offshore and outsourcing projects - usually long term contracting out of non-core and core business processes to an outside provider - and ship the work to India. Or allow access to experts sitting in India into the mainframe of a company, say, in Europe.

Several factors help weigh the scales in favour of offshoring and outsourcing, says Tugnait.

“Labour arbitrage and cutting down your infrastructure costs makes a difference of almost 20 to 40 per cent, sometimes more,” explains Tugnait. “Because we are a very stable company in managing offshore projects, the cost of failure also comes down.”

So why the expansion outside of India?

“Indian (IT) companies are expanding globally in terms of sales and marketing and customer acquisition,” says Tugnait. “At the same time, because of the political situation and some of the uncertainties present in the current world economic environment, we are building alternate sites and development centres.

“In terms of sales and marketing, it’s quite simple. You need to expand and hedge your bets. You can’t be America-centric. Moreover, existing clients of the company are expanding into other territories. So, you need to follow the dollar. Many of our (U.S.) clients have bases in Canada and were asking us to set up a centre here.”

The Toronto centre is also mindful of Satyam’s Canadian clients, says Tugnait.

“Often times you’ll have a client who wants a percentage of the work off-shored, but the rest to be done in their backyard.”

Canada also provides an excellent opportunity for companies such as Satyam to set up “near-shore” operations.

“Because of the cost arbitrage with the U.S., cost of living, same time zones, and the proximity to the (auto-industry) in Detroit, we can operate a near-shore centre for doing work such as application development and maintenance for our U.S.-based clients,” explains Tugnait. “The near-shore development centre is actually a big priority for us.”

Also Indian IT companies have started to scale up their offshore and outsourcing niches by adding high-end consulting and support systems.

The hitherto soaring Indian IT sector has recently been jolted out of complacency. There’s been a stall in the boom to offshore/outsource services to India and an increase in competition on the application development front from China, Eastern Europe and the Philippines.

In April this yea r, Infosys announced a lower-than-expected 11.8 per cent growth forecast for the next year. In the same month, Wipro announced weaker than expected earnings of $170 million (U.S.) and projected a 4 per cent revenue increase for the current quarter. The announcements threw the shares for a tumble.

Although Satyam posted flat quarterly earnings, its stock traded up 6 per cent, also raising rival shares.

The Indian IT industry, then, is adding to its advantages by providing end-to-end services and global development centres. Besides resources such as code-gurus who can solve tech problems with a snap of the fingers, companies such as Satyam are now offering high-end consulting systems architecting and even business-process support.

Satyam, with a 1,000 strong team focusing on SAP alone, is an early entrant into this developing trend of packaged implementation.

Nevertheless, there has been a growing momentum in the backlash against offshoring and outsourcing.

For example, a new customer service centre scheduled to open in New Jersey would repatriate an overseas customer services operation based out of India, after the department of Human Services negotiated a deal with eFunds Corp. of Arizona.

The monthly cost for running the centre, which answers questions posed by New Jersey welfare and food stamp recipients, will increase $74,000 (U.S.) over the current arrangement, officials said.
Similarly unions in Australia attacked their nation’s telecom company Telstra for outsourcing arrangements with Indian companies Infosys and Satyam.

Despite the backlash, however, experts say that offshoring and outsourcing is here to stay.

The American accounting industry has recently begun using India’s outsourcing and technology services to process American clients’ tax returns, in some cases replacing work traditionally done by U.S. accountants. Although in its initial stages, experts predict the project might soon become the norm for accounting firms to deal with individuals’ taxes.

Tugnait emphasizes that Satyam will also be adding to the Canadian economy.

“We’re setting up a centre here,” he says. “We’ll be recruiting local talent, from administration, to IT consultants to management positions. We’re not here to divert funds from Canada, we’ll be contributing to Canada.”