Indian IT has come of age

FIRST PERSON: Som Mittal, President, Nasscom

The Indian IT industry has matured extensively. Though established two decades ago, it is the past 10 years that have been the most defining in terms of the strides taken by the sector.

What started as a "low-cost support industry", is now a sector specialising in knowledge-intensive processes. Recognising the specialised skill sets built up by the Indian IT-BPO industry in new and emerging areas such as engineering services outsourcing, remote infrastructure management and animation and gaming, Nasscom has released focused research reports on the potential opportunity in these segments.

I firmly believe that demographic compulsions, driven by ageing populations and leading to manpower shortages in matured economies, will force the world to find newer ways to service itself.

India, with its significant pool of talent and healthy demographics, will have almost 47 million people in the working age group by 2020 and can play an important role in this domain. All that the IT-BPO industry needs to do is to convert this population into a job-ready, rightly-skilled and employable base of people.

As a generator of employment, the IT-BPO sector provides direct employment to two million individuals. The industry has changed the aspirations of youth. It has taken the opportunity beyond the metros to tier-II and tier-III cities, thereby developing them as future economic hubs. The industry is also experimenting with shifting some amount of BPO work to rural and semi-rural areas.

It is making concerted efforts to employ more women, employ physically challenged individuals and bring in diversity into the system.

This sector has also led to an employment boom in other ancillary industries such as catering, transport, security, etc. The Nasscom-Crisil Report 2006 reveals that every job in the IT-BPO industry creates four jobs in other sectors.

Going forward, a huge opportunity lies ahead for the IT-BPO sector. By 2010, India's offshore industry could generate $60 billion in export revenues, account for 17 per cent of GDP growth, pay for a massive infrastructure build-out and sustain around nine million jobs.

Of course, it will need to focus on key areas such as education in order to strengthen the human resource pool and arm it with soft and hard skills. The industry is also investing heavily to make the trainable workforce 'employable'.

Initiatives such as Nasscom's National Skills Registry, which ensures background checks, and the Data Security Council of India will set global standards for the IT industry.

The Nasscom India Leadership Forum 2008, beginning today, is centred upon the theme: 'Shrinking the World, Riding the Wave'.

It will throw a spotlight on the globalisation of the IT-BPO industry and its emerging role on the world stage. This year's event, bolstered by the participation of global business and technology leaders, analysts, thought gurus, customers and policymakers, will focus on the bigger picture.