Need is to create a market, not address one: Som Mittal

With the economic downturn having "kind of ebbed" new opportunities are making it necessary for companies to create a market need and not address it, NASSCOM President Som Mittal said here today.

"New dynamics are driving us. The dialogue now is about transformation and creating new business models. The companies are not going to be led by recovery but what will make recovery happen", he said in his opening note at the two-day NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) Product Conclave and Expo 2009 here today.

Bullish about opportunities in India, Mittal, who is the President and CEO of Digital Globalsoft Ltd, said the meltdown is seeing demographic shifts taking place.

"People would come to India because they need to leverage talent wherever it is available. By 2025, the Asia Pacific economies will cross that of Europe," he said.

Mittal also envisaged unchartered growth in "virgin areas" like climate change and health care.

Exhorting software firms to "do something revolutionary and start selling it", Garage Technology Ventures MD Guy Kawasaki said it was now time to be innovative when one did not have to pay for one's tools, marketing or even infrastructure.

He also asked software firms to embrace Twitter as a marketing plan, describing it as "not just a social networking mechanism but a great tool to push out important information".