India Offers Vast Opportunities for Entrepreneurship Date:   Tuesday , December 01, 2009 Today, India has adapted to the growing knowledge orientation in each industry and would certainly be a leader in the R&D for many industry verticals. And at the same time, a knowledgeable worker is also an inevitable necessity in every sphere of industry, and this is where the India scores. The social disparities in India are a key driver for intense competition among individuals - contributing to higher productivity professionally. India’s vast talent pool with a unique combination of multi skilling and English language ability has made a great value proposition to any investor. In addition, a stable political system, growing consumerism, investor friendly environment, vast growth opportunities in critical sectors like health care, utility, infrastructure together make India a valuable opportunity for investment and growth. In the global technology space, the ‘Advantage India’ is being a nascent hub of knowledge industry. While this is established in the IT space, India will surely go a long way in establishing R&D capabilities in bio-technology, space, materials and agriculture. Also, the demands of a vast urban/rural population will drive innovative technologies being created or adopted in utility services, housing, infrastructure and healthcare. However, during the last decade, India has been growing at break neck pace, and needs to adapt to a more stable growth and outlook. IT Services space has a good potential though it has lost its sheen as a high growth industry during the last two years. Rapid urbanization and consequent social inequalities are what need to be addressed for making it just and equal to a larger section. Also, in the pursuit of being a hub of R&D for global technology space, what are needed to develop the abilities would be - the initiatives from the Government in encouraging higher education/career prospects in research. But, on the other hand, we should agree that we are a young nation having already made a mark in the world of entrepreneurship with several Indian companies or persons of Indian origin leading quite a few companies in the world across a varies spectrum. It is remarkably noted that India has been successful in creating employable manpower. However, the Indian entrepreneurs have been largely benefited with a slew of opportunities, which came their way as part of economic surge. But, we need to create a breed of entrepreneurs who look forward to a strenuous path of research and development in new areas. Although it was pretty much easy creating or utilizing an opportunity in IT industry, but the growth cycles are much varied and slow in other sectors and hence this eco system needs to be nourished, incentivized and recognized socially, economically and nationally. With a rosy expedition ahead for India, we believe IT services industry should focus on creation of products from out of the services they have been rendering subject to IP rights in such projects. This would not just facilitate better productivity, but go a long way in contributing to low cost products/services, which are the target of SMB. While India has seen good revenues from overseas operations/customers, we should also start addressing the needs or demands of Indian market, which could largely be driven by SAAS models or a hybrid of SAAS and traditional models of service. The author is the CEO of Ascent Consulting