Apple is secretive about almost everything it does. And among its best kept secrets is the work it does with Indian IT vendors.
The vendors themselves are sworn to secrecy through stringent non-disclosure agreements. And since Apple is invariably among their most valued clients, they don’t disclose a word about their relationship with the Cupertino-based iPhone and iPad maker.
But some of the secrets are spilling out. TOI spoke to some research firms and industry sources to put together details of which vendor does what for the $200-billion US consumer electronics brand.
Four large Indian IT companies — TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Tech Mahindra — and a relatively small vendor Exilant are the primary vendors.
The five together provide a host of services to Apple in areas of enterprise applications, business intelligence and data-warehousing, application development and maintenance (ADM), channel sales, customer relationship management, product lifecycle management, finance and customer care.
Infosys is focused on customer care and supply chain.It works on SAP modules in material management, warehouse management. It is also involved in application development and maintenance of customer care applications including Apple Certified Server Engineer (ACSE), an industry certification to provide server-based solutions and troubleshoot issues related to server installations.
India’s largest IT services player TCS is focused on customer relationship management. It provides business intelligence and data warehousing services for customer data analytics. It also ports Apple’s web applications into iOS-compatible mobile apps. Wipro does the master data management for its supply chain. It also provides advanced analytics for database marketing, retail marketing and web-based marketing. Tech Mahindra does work related to finance and product lifecycle management.
