Software products policy positive step towards making India global hub: Nasscom

IT industry body Nasscom on Friday said the National Policy on Software Products is a "positive step" towards empowering India to become global software products hub.

"The policy recommendations are aligned to Nasscom's suggestions on sectorial software product development clusters, talent accelerator programs and the initiative to nurturing of software products start-ups..." Nasscom said in a statement.

It added that the body will continue working with the government and other stakeholders to ensure a conducive policy for the industry at large to build a sustainable business environment.

"Nasscom hopes that the policy will drive the creation of at least 30 product driven companies from India by 2025," the statement said.

The Cabinet Thursday approved a national policy on software products that aims to position India as a hub for software products development and creating 65 lakh jobs by 2025.

"India's IT revenue is USD 168 billion but most of it is services. Software product component is less, it is just USD 7.1 billion. Most of the software products are imported. The software product policy is designed to make India a big centre of software products by 2025," IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said after the Cabinet briefing.

This policy has a scope of giving employment to nearly 65 lakh people and will have enormous revenue benefit, he had noted.

The new policy seeks to nurture 10,000 technology start-ups working on software products, including 1,000 in tier II and III towns as well as upskilling 10 lakh IT professionals that includes one lakh school and college students.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Director General Omkar Rai said the policy would help in creating more India-based software product companies and will make sure that India gets its due share in the ever-growing global software product market.

This policy comes as a major booster and will eliminate the ambiguity that existed in terms of defining the services and the product industries STPI has already taken various steps towards making India a Software Product Nation, STPI said in a statement.

"...STPI has already taken initiatives to promote and create around 21 centres of excellence (CoE) in collaborative model with academia, industry and such other stakeholders which will nurture and fulfil the vision of creating 10,000 technology start- ups by 2025," Rai said.