India's IT Industry:Dream Run

The overall global economic slowdown notwithstanding, the Indian IT software and services industry is maintaining a steady pace of growth and keeping its place as the spearhead of India’s export attack.Like old wine, the Indian IT software and services industry has matured, become more refined and moved up the value chain in terms of solutions offered to customers. The customers, from all parts of the globe, have meanwhile continued to flock to India’s corporates for help with their software needs. Major corporations are continuing to rely on Indian software companies for both legacy and new technology solutions.

The wide span of the country’s expertise across myriad technologies and platforms has provided the Indian software engine with awesome power to deal with any kind of IT requirement. The enormous base of skilled manpower — India’s PhDs and computer science graduates — is the envy of virtually every country, and in fact a major draw for global customers.


What is it then that has enabled Indian software companies to make the global market their playing ground? Phiroz Vandrevala, Chairman, NASSCOM analyzes the growth of the Indian software industry along with its implications for the global market.The year 2000-01 was yet another winner for the Indian software and services majors who continued to hold fort in the world markets.

The industry grew at a heady 55 percent, proving skeptics wrong and convincing them that there was much more depth to the software industry than expected. Despite the prevailing global economic downturn, the Indian software and services industry is convinced it will be able to achieve the ambitious targets it has set for itself. The NASSCOM-McKinsey Study 1999 which has furnished a goal of $50 billion of software exports by 2008 has not been revised or scaled down by Indian software majors.

Further cause for cheer has come from international business intelligence and advisory leader Gartner Inc., which recently declared through a study that despite layoffs and cutbacks among numerous IT vendors, many organizations are increasing their IT budgets in 2001. The survey, covering over 589 organizations worldwide, has shown that 56 percent of respondents plan to spend more on IT in 2001 than they did in 2000.