Ways to sustain the Indian IT growth: Sachin Pilot

By Juby Thomas, SiliconIndia   |    20 Comments
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Ways to sustain the Indian IT growth: Sachin Pilot
Bangalore: Adoption of new liberal policies in India has given birth for immense opportunities to its industries. Success story of India's Software Industry is a step in the same direction. Today, software exports have a major share in India's total exports. The credit goes to young techies and scientists. There is a big challenge for the country to sustain this growth. Sachin Pilot Union Minister for IT and communication has brought out 3 major steps to sustain this growth. During the 13th edition of India's information and communication technology event 'Bangalore IT.biz 2010' he enhanced the IT professionals to follow the following steps to sustain growth. 1. Diversification According to the Union Minister there should be two types of diversifation that should happen. Primarily and most importantly the domestic diversification should take place. He admitted the fact that the level of penetration in rural areas was terribly poor; even though there were huge opportunities for IT industries to tap this market. "While the Indian IT industry contributes around six percent to India's GDP, it should be a vehicle to change citizens' lives in the rural areas," said Pilot. As an initiative Government of India has taken a commitment to connect every single panchayat with high-speed broadband by 2012. Secondly, he appealed to the Indian IT industry to diversify their export basket from U.S. and Europe to other emerging economies. U.S.-based clients currently contribute around 60 percent of Indian IT majors' revenue. As emerging geographies expand IT adoption through outsourcing/off-shoring, the country should expand its focus as well. "Diversification of Indian IT exports, creating strength in niche areas will sustain growth momentum for the industry," he said. 2. Competition A good spirit of competition can be said as the key to success in any field. The country should continue to provide the advantage of world class quality and talented resource, if it has to sustain the growth in the industry. India would benefit from emergence of new competitiors. Existing companies should adapt to new competition. Without moving out of their cubicles in India, there are startups that are making waves in the world market. Some of these are not even based out of traditional tech hubs like Bangalore and Pune, but are catering to global biggies from their small-town centres in Jalandar and Noida. All these should bring a right spirit of competition and that will indeed sustain the growth. 3.Shift in the focus There should be a shift in the focus. We should cash in other emerging opportunities like hardware industry. Indian hardware industry is now pegged at $45 billion which is expected to touch $125 billion in 2015 and $400 billion in 2020. India should also emphasize on hardware manufacturing market for furthering growth of the industry. It is a good sign that the Karnataka government is planning to come up with a Hardware Policy soon. "We are working on a revised IT policy along with a Hardware policy which will be unveiled soon,"said B.S. Yeddyurappa, Chief Minister of Karnataka.