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Indian Software Industry
With the growth of computer industry in India , India is now
emerging as an important destination for global business.
The growth of computer industry in India has led to the growth
of software industry, the hardware industry and the internet in
India. GOI has accepted the fact that to meet the expanding demands
of India's 900 million population, intensive computerization is
not only inevitable but imperative. Service sectors in the Indian
economy have resorted to computerization on a large scale
to ensure availability of consistent information at the right
time. Of late, both the GOI and private sector have emerged
as major end-users of computer systems and software. At the present
rate of growth, the country which had only 100 computers before
1970 will have over five million computers before the turn
of the century.
Indian Software Industry
Indian Software Industry is one of the fastest sectors of the
Indian economy employing about 2.50 lakh workers mostly from the
highly skilled and educated segments. During the financial year
19998-99 (March-Feb) the Indian software industry was worth about
159 billion Indian Rupees (3.85 billion $ US) and exports accounted
for nearly 70% of this at 2.69 billion USD. In 1999 - 2000 the
Indian software industry is expected to gross over 5.65
billion USD representing the growth of nearly 50%.
Though India was an early convert to computers with the Indian
Government and the industry using mainframes and data entry machines
as early as the 50s/60s the Indian Software Industry took off
only since the mid 1980's. An idea of its phenomenal growth
can be had from the fact that the total industry output increased
from Indian Rupees 500 million in 1988-89 to 1,59,000 million
in 1998-99.
The Indian Software Industry is dominated (upto 70% by value)
by exports and during the first decade of its evolution exports
were wholly comprised of onsite staffing services at clients location
overseas(also known as professional services or body shopping).
From this lower end of the value chain the industry has
steadily worked its way up and during 98-99 upto 40% of the exports
were by way of offshore services or packaged products.
The gross revenues for the industry however do not fully reveal
its potential to carry out software development work of outstanding
quality. For example several top notch global IT majors like Microsoft,
Motorola, Oracle, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Alcatel and others
are working on their next generation products in their Indian
labs. Similarly out of about one dozen software labs across the
world rated at level 5(the highest) of SEI-CMM standards 5 are
in India with nearly 10 or so at level 4. More than 200 of Fortune
1000 companies out source software of significant values from
India for their core operations.
Domain Strengths
Indian Software companies have demonstrated their strengths in
the 4 main domains of
- banking and financial services
- insurance
- manufacturing
- internet and e-commerce
IT enabled services
The latest software sector that is attracting increasingly large
interest and investment is IT enabled teleworking services like
call centres, medical and legal transcriptions, data and map digitisation,
CAD, managing large databases, web content creation, animation
etc. Companies like Swissair, GE, Bechtel, Singapore Airlines
and several American insurance companies and Hollywood studios
have either set up such facilities or have outsourcing arrangements
with Indian companies. Thos sector currently employs 25,000 people
and is expected to explode over the next decade creating atleast
a million jobs. India has tremendous natural strengths in this
area such as skilled and English speaking work force at internationally
competitive wages, reliable communication network atleast in the
major cities, ideal time zone placement etc.
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