Information Technology

December 6, 2019 India INC

Information Technology

It is popularly said that the sun of Information Technology rises in the US and shines on India. Sure, the world’s IT lab has emerged as the fourth largest IT market in Asia Pacific. And making best use of India’s unique position is the foreign IT giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Intel which have set up their shops in the country. Equally important is the Indian IT companies such as the Infosys, Wipro, NIIT etc. which have gone global by virtue of their enterprising talent. No wonder, the annual growth rate of India’s software exports has been consistently over 50 per cent since 1991. The IT industry that was $50 million in 1991 is projected to be over $ 50 billion by 2011. In fact, knowledge economy is the most prized catch for India. It has the second largest English speaking scientific professionals in the world, second only to the US. According to an estimate, India has over four million technical workers, over 1,800 educational institutions and polytechnics, which train more than 65,000 computer software professionals every year. A number of global IT giants are setting their centers especially in the field of R&D in the country. Thus, Google, the world’s largest search engine, is all set to open an R&D centre in Bangalore and leading web portal Yahoo also carries out R&D work in Bangalore. The US-based chipmaker Intersil is setting up a design centre in Bangalore and IBM has set up a research lab in Delhi to tap Indian talent. Today, India exports software and services to nearly 95 countries around the world. The share of North America (US & Canada) in India’s software exports is about 61 per cent. In 1999-2000, more than a third of Fortune 500 companies outsourced their software requirements to India. According to the NASSCOM – McKinsey report, the annual revenue projections for India’s IT industry in 2008 are $ 87 billion and market openings are emerging across four broad sectors, IT services, software products, ITES, and e-businesses. As per the report, software along with services will contribute over 7.5% of the GDP growth of the country and the IT exports will account for 35% of the total exports. The Indian IT is expected to create 2.2 million jobs by 2008 and attract FDI of $4-5 billion with export touching $50 billion. And if the growth of the vibrant sector is any indicator, it’s here that the future of India will shine, and growth will thrive.