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INNOVATING FOR EMERGING MARKETS

Viswanath Poosala (Vishy)
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Viswanath Poosala (Vishy)
A few decades back India was seen as a producer of finished goods for the international market; or if we put it bluntly, we were seen as a dumping ground for products from the developed countries. A pretty sad scenario as we used to import more and our exports were frugal. Barring agriculture and spices, we did not have much to rave about…

However, a change in mindset by the authorities has paved the path towards progress. India’s economic growth has prospered over the years thanks largely to the opening of markets to foreign companies and investors which has ushered a very healthy and competitive environment. This trend started way back in the early 90s where liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation policy of 1991 opened up new horizons of opportunities for Indian business to take shape firmly and be equally competent in the world markets.

As a result, India has progressed quite well in terms of technological innovation and has managed to produce high-tech products and services. In a way, we are world leaders when it comes to providing solutions, as more or less, every software product or service that comes out has a “made in India” tag to it. It definitely makes us feel proud as we are one of the top contributors to the global economy. But somewhere in this melee, we are underperforming to our true innovation potential—this somehow has affected our industrial competitiveness and economic growth. There is no specific answer to this anomaly as India is a very large and diversified country.

The bottlenecks

For building a resurgent India, we need good infrastructure, better governance and overall good policies which have to be implemented in the right earnest. Due to lack of coordination amongst the various bodies, development has not reached to the far flung rural areas; the perpetual problem of location, language, culture, literacy levels, incomes, etc., has kept the country on tenterhooks. Most of the development is in the larger metros and the rural areas have still a long way to catch up. In order to sustain the current growth rate and even to surpass it, India needs to aggressively harness its innovation potential, relying on effective long term policies which would help us achieve true economic and social transformation.


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