Thursday, November 04, 2004

Software Industry is the top exporter

MUMBAI: The software industry has overtaken the gems and jewellery as well as textiles industries, to become the number one exporter in the country, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) President Kiran Karnik said.
Speaking at Stanford Asia Technology Initiative’s (ATI) Global Entrepreneurship Conference on ‘The Rise of the Indian Multinational: Global Business Trends’ Karnik said that software accounted for exports worth $13 billion against a total merchandise export of $60 billion.
“The industry grew at 30 per cent last year despite the slowdown in the US economy and the projected growth this year is 32 per cent,” the Nasscom President said.
He attributed the performance to India’s excellent brand value and something known as the PQRS factor - Productivity, Quality, Rate and Skills, where the last factor refers not just to numbers but to scalability of skillsets as well.
Nevertheless, there are certain issues that needed to be addressed for India to emerge as an IT superpower. In order to ensure adequate security and privacy of large data, Nasscom is working on a framework in which legislation and enforcement go hand in hand, he said.
“On the issue of human resource development, Nasscom is working with state government schools to introduce English language and computer education at the primary level itself, besides ensuring regular appraisal of knowledge dissemination practices from the secondary level upwards,” Karnik said.
The organisation is also working on a US-India partnership model under which companies in the US would act as front-ends through financial, marketing and client interface support, while India would provide the human capital for product and systems development.
Karnik was also optimistic about the improvement of infrastructure particularly in the telecom sector that has already seen a 30 per cent reduction in prices last year and which is expected to see a similar reduction this year as well.
Stanford University Electrical Engineering Professor Dr Arogyaswami Paulraj pointed out that India would be a world-class consumer by 2010 with 120-150 million mobile subscribers, 30 million consumers of broadband services and 10 million in LAN.
He estimated capital investment in the wireless sector at $50 to $75 billion by that year. However, a great thrust is needed for India to emerge as a technological base in the wireless segment, since the country's role in research, contribution to standards and core silicon applications are negligible.

As published in The Herald, Pune. (c) The Herald.

Posted by Scribbler at 2:24 AM