India may build $100 bn software product industry by 2025: iSpirt

Domestic market, SMEs to aid Indian software products growth

 Software product think-tank, Indian Software Products Industry Roundtable (iSpirt) today said India has the potential to build a $100 billion software product industry by 2025 as against around $2 billion currently, if the government and the industry “act purposefully”.

                        

In its first 'Software Product Industry Monitor Report' released today, iSpirt said, the domestic market, which is expected to grow at about 14 per cent in the coming times (three times the global rate), will aid the growth of Indian software product companies in a big way. A good part of demand for software products will come from the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector and from sectors such as healthcare and education.

 

“While the existing framework of sector’s revenue contribution does not concur to this estimate all that is required to make this happen is some resolute and purposeful action by two major stakeholders: industry and government,” iSpirt said.

 

iSpirt's estimate is significantly different from IT industry body Nasscom's projection that by 2020, the total market opportunity in software products for Indian companies, including exports and domestic sales, is around $10 billion.

 

“Nasscom's definition of a software product companies is very different from ours,” Sharad Sharma, founding member of iSpirt said. “They include only enterprise products where as we include Saas (software as a service), consumer and enterprise segments.”

 

Among others, iSpirt said the software product sector requires leadership skills, and a vibrant software ecosystem to propel growth in the sector. 

 

The think-tank has over the past year worked to provide a boost to Indian software product entrepreneurs through its various initiatives such as holding roundtables to promote mergers and acquisitions, developing a community called 'product nation', and even enabling M&As in the sector.

 

“India has proved its combinatorial innovation at work in the UID project besides a host of SaaS success stories by Indian origin companies,” iSpirt said. “India is currently going through a period of ‘combinatorial innovation’. Combinatorial innovation makes it possible for small entrepreneurial teams to develop complex business applications quickly.”