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February 11, 2008 15:28 IST
The slowdown of the US economy and the appreciating rupee hardly have any affect on the India's IT sector. The IT industry is poised to grow at 33 per cent growth in the fiscal year 2008 and is on target to emerge as a $75 billion sector by 2010, Nasscom said on Monday.
Releasing the strategic review for 2008 in Mumbai, Nasscom chairman Lakshmi Narayanan said, ''Despite heavy winds, we continue to do very well and are meeting year after year, stretched growth targets.'' Nasscom said software and services export would cross $40 billion in fiscal 2008 with the domestic market estimated at $23 billion.
''Positive market indications and strong records strongly support the optimism of the industry in achieving its aspired target of $60 billion in software and services exports and $73-75 billion in overall software and services revenue by fiscal 2010. Direct employment is expected to reach two million people,'' Lakshmi Narayanan said.
He said, ''The robust growth of the Indian IT BPO industry by over 33 per cent in the current fiscal reinforces the confidence of global corporations in India. As we move, 2010 trend indicates that the industry is firmly poised for broad growth across industry and service lines. It strengthen India's leadership position as the primary sourcing location for software IT experimentation and business process related services'', he added.
The new Nasscom president Som Mittal said, the Indian IT industry has been rapidly evolving and growth was on track to achieve, if not exceed the targets for 2010. ''The trends are interesting and findings indicate that domestic market is poised for growth with IT spends trending upwards, particularly by the government'' he added. Mittal said there was an increasing level of specialisation within the industry both in IT services and BPO, exhibiting signs of a rapidly maturing industry. However, there were global macro economic challenges, talent, manpower and infrastructure issues that need to be addressed and resolved collectively.
''The industry has shown resilience and has taken several steps to mitigate the impact.'' Mittal said the Indian IT industry was currently spread across 77 centres in 25 countries with the growing stress on near shore and on shore assignments. The industry has fully integrated the global development model, he added.
Lakshmi Narayanan said, achieving the 2010 target would mean an increasing contribution of the sector to the socio economic development of the country. ''At the aspired levels of growth, IT-BPO will employ about 2.5 to three million professionals directly in the sector, account for direct investment of about $10 to 15 billion and contribute seven to eight per cent of the national GDP by 2010''.
Nasscom in its review said, though on short term the US outlook is muted, global technology spending forecasts remain strong, supported by the momentum in emerging market economies and the Asia Pacific region. Nature of short term cutbacks in US technology spends were unlikely to impact global sourcing negatively, in fact could even boost its growth.
It said the global sourcing penetration was estimated to be growing at nearly four times the rate of absolute technology spends. This signified immense opportunities for rapid growth. ''While India is uniquely advantaged to bet address these opportunities, they are not lost to others. Key stakeholders need to continue working in a focussed and co-ordinated manner for India to realise its potential,'' it added.
Nasscom advised the IT companies to maintain a keen emphasis ensuring that they continue to deliver the core benefits as well as enhance the overall value proportion for their clients.
This would entail increased investments across the key axes of people, processes and technology in building deeper domain/functional skills and might also require firms to adopt a more global footprint.
Asked about the job cuts by TCS [Get Quote] and IBM, Lakshmi Narayanan defended the companies stating that they were enhancing their performance capabilities to meet more stringent future requirements.
Giving the sector wise break up, Nacsscom said, out of the estimated $31 billion from IT services, $23.1 billion came from exports, with the domestic market contributing the balance.
The share of exports and domestic markets for the ITES-BPO segment was $10.9 billion and $1.6 billion respectively. Engineering services, R&D and software products saw an export of $6.3 billion and domestic sales of $2.2 billion.
The hardware sector would see a $12 billion market in the current fiscal with domestic market alone contributing $11.5 billion.
UNI
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