For two decades India has leveraged upon the opportunity and spread its IT presence worldwide. And we have seen IT super powers built on this opportunity. This inspired many next generation entrepreneurs to cash in on the next big wave and build companies. However, things have been changing since last two years.

Many IT/ITes players with whome the editorial team at the Smarttechie sat with to understand the trends in the industry felt that important structural changes, taking place on the back of a global economic meltdown, which will propel a new market order in the Indian IT/ITeS industry. Alongside, they also felt that competition within the domestic market has increased many fold due to the influx of major players into the domestic market, which will become the instrumental in the transformation.

India’s IT and BPO exports, which grew at a rate of 30-32 percent for many years in the last 10 years, halved to a growth rate of 16.3 percent in 2008-09 and is likely to fall further to 4-7 percent in 2009-10 due to the economic slowdown, says a NASSCOM survey. The industry in its first quarter results has demonstrated sustained focus with increased operating margins and enhanced utilization. The survey estimates that the IT-BPO export revenues will grow by 4-7 percent to reach $48-50 billion in FY09-10.

Despite these challenges, there are quite a few IT and ITES companies who are still going strong by adopting novel strategies along with the changing times and requirements, which we believe will be able to address the emerging market conditions and challenges and come out as winners. This month’s feature “10 most promising IT and ITeS Companies” presents such laudable companies.