Speaking at a Nasscom seminar on 'Offshore product development and application services' in Chennai, experts, however, said the IT biggies could retain their position by forming a separate division to concentrate on the OPD business, where the potential for India was as big as $9 billion now.
"There is a strong possibility that the existing leaders such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro can be toppled by a new set of companies that are in the OPD space," said Gowri Subramanian, CEO of Aspire Systems.
He said that currently the global software product revenues stood at $180 billion and about $36 billion or 18-20 per cent of this was the R&D expenditure by the software firms.
The potential for India was 25 per cent of this, which is $9 billion, he added. "This would mean that there is great potential for many billion dollar companies to emerge," Subramanian said.
T Shankar of Management Solutions said big IT companies, which now concentrate on software services business, could easily form a separate division to tap the potential in the OPD business.
For the smaller companies, which are nimble and take decisions faster, the scope in the OPD business was much higher, he said.
