Indian IT industry now a change originator, not in catch-up mode, say tech honchos

The USD 191 billion Indian IT industry has shifted to being a change originator from being in a "catch-up" mode for the initial few decades of its journey, top tech industry leaders said on Wednesday.

The change has seen Indian companies getting into product spaces with platforms like TCS' BaNCS, which was till now the stronghold of tech majors from the developed world, they said.

"Biggest shift has been that we were on the catch-up mode. Last few years, we are the originators, it's a change," the chief executive of the country's largest software exporter TCS, Rajesh Gopinathan, said at the annual Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum (NTLF) here.

Speaking at a rare panel discussion which had heads of all the top IT companies, immediate rival Infosys' chief executive Salil Parekh endorsed the views and called his company's offerings on cloud an example of this change.

Rishad Premji of Wipro said his company is doing "productisation" of services rather than doing full products by themselves and added that every company has its own distinct strategy.

Gopinathan said India always had the intellect to build products but never capitalised on the talent.

"We've not mastered the art of capturing that talent and productising it," he said, exuding confidence that it will be able to do this in less than a decade.

Parekh was very exuberant on the same and claimed that the industry now has a one-way ticket to growth because technology is the buzzword all across the world and it can provide the right interventions.

On the possibilities of mergers and acquisitions, which is deployed by companies to grow both revenue as well as capabilities, Premji advised a cautious approach and not going "berserk".

Gopinathan said TCS has been returning back cash generated from the business back to shareholders for the last few years rather than deploying it for acquisitions, which though few in number, are very large in size.

He said in an economy which will touch the USD 5 trillion mark, IT will be a USD 1.5 trillion industry in itself.

"What industrialisation did to Europe (in the medieval period), technology will do to India. We are at cusp of that," Gopinathan added.