Bengal’s tech hub has begun to get that sinking feeling as markets worldwide take a tumble, bringing down with them some of the financial giants that outsource business to Sector V companies.

“These are really bad times. We fear for our jobs,” said an employee of an IT company in the Salt Lake Electronics Complex.

He should know, having represented his company in projects with several banks and financial institutions in the US over the past five years.

The techie brigade, tuned in to developments in the US and Europe ever since Lehman Brothers went belly-up and a wobbly Merrill Lynch tottered into the arms of Bank of America, had initially thought that the financial shake-up was just a passing phase. But the developments over the past two weeks have left most of them shaken.

“When there is a crisis in any industry, the IT budget is invariably pruned and projects dry up,” said a senior official of a technology solutions company.

As offices opened on Friday after the Puja holidays, the topic of discussion among the Sector V crowd was not how everyone enjoyed the festive break but how long the churn would continue.

Global banks and financial institutions contribute around 40 per cent of the Rs 4,500 crore worth of business that is annually outsourced to the 225-odd companies operating out of Sector V. Most IT companies in Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s showpiece tech township cater to companies in the US, where the slide began.

Companies don’t reveal the names of their clients but Metro found out that some of the troubled entities in the world of finance — including Wachovia and Merrill Lynch — along with Citigroup, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase receive tech support from Sector V.

“Companies like Cognizant Technology Solutions and Tata Consultancy Services have high exposure to the banking and finance sector, especially through their Calcutta operations,” a source said.

Technology solutions companies develop various products to facilitate transactions in the world of finance, besides providing annual maintenance support, data management services and new software to make their client servicing systems more effective.

According to an industry source, in the short term most contracts would be “slow in maturing, if not scrapped”.

“Outsourcing decisions in most companies are taken by the chief financial officers. Given the scenario, most of them will be unwilling to take a call right now. They will wait for the crisis to blow over and contracts could, therefore, take longer to materialise,” said Kalyan Kar, the managing director of Acclaris.

The irony is that IT companies in Sector V had been hoping for higher export revenues after the rupee went down against the dollar.

But some analysts see a silver lining in the cloud.

“Technology solutions companies operating out of India will benefit from the reorganisation and restructuring that is an integral part of the process of mergers and acquisitions that has begun worldwide. Some of the financial institutions that haven’t outsourced business to this country so far will now be forced to do so to cut costs,” said a senior IBM official.