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IT sector eyes product development

Bipin Chandran

An infotech product from India might soon make headlines globally. After establishing a place for itself in the global software outsourcing market, the country is now becoming a centre for product development by domestic companies as well as multinationals operating in the country.

A handful of infotech companies are either test-marketing or making prototypes of cost-effective information technology products developed indigenously.

These include the country's top two infotech firms, Wipro and Infosys, in addition to TVS Electronics and C-DAC, and multinational companies like SCO, Adobe and Microsoft, among others.

TVS Electronics, for instance, is currently test-marketing an indigenously developed sales terminals in Chennai, which cost less than half the price of products by international companies like IBM.

This product consists of a 14-inch monitor, a built-in UPS and a printer and is rugged enough to withstand the grime and dust in a typical Indian store.

Infosys, which already has a banking software solution called "Finacle", is now looking at developing new products and getting into new markets.

"In the product business, we are continuously looking at enriching our offering to our customers. It is an on-going process and we are committed to it," said Girish Vaidya, senior vice-president and head of Infosys banking business unit.

Indias leading software company Wipro is also at present working on various technologies which can be developed as products.

Wipro is manufacturing cost-effective printer heads developed in India but produced abroad. It is also working on home-networking technologies.

"Indian companies have also realised that product development offers a great potential not only in the domestic market but also in the international market," says Naresh Gupta, managing director of Adobe India.

Multinational company SCO has introduced a software product for the global market, which is completely developed by its software development team in India.

The product named Small Foot is a software for hand held devices and special purpose hardware.

"This shows that India is not just a destination for software services but we can develop products completely out of India. We are also looking at developing more products out of India," said Srikant Acharya, country director, India and South Asia, SCO.

This apart, a bunch of companies are also developing local language software targeted at the huge domestic market.

These include the worlds largest software company Microsoft , publishing software company Adobe and homegrown companies like Webdunia.

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