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The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) and the Telangana government today jointly announced Hyderabad as the venue for the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) scheduled to be held in 2018. Organisers said the event would witness the presence of the who’s who of the software industry from across the globe.
The biennial WCIT is a flagship event of the World Information Technology Software Association, a consortium of members across 80 countries that represent 90 per cent of the world’s software market. Nasscom is one of the few associations to have a representation on the board of this global association.
The 2016 edition of WCIT has already been decided to be held in Brazil while the recent congress was conducted in September 2014 in Mexico.
Announcing the details of this global event, Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar said the event was being held for the first time in India and it was coming at a time when innovation had become the new hallmark of the Indian software industry.
“The Indian software industry is now being recognised for its innovation capability in education, health, analytics and start-ups among many others things,” Chandrashekhar said.
According to him, the world congress would discuss government policies, global convergence, future of technology, cyber security and other things.
“In fact various collaboration models are being emerged in many of these sectors, including cyber security where the companies and the governments are coming together to accomplish these tasks,” he said.
The Nasscom president was hopeful that the event would attract a minimum of 3,000 top leaders of the software industry from various countries and would also help in brand building of the Hyderabad city, which is already home to the operations of several global and Indian IT companies. The Government of India is also expected to partner with this event, according to him.
Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao said the state government would make special efforts to ensure the best of facilities and support to conduct the event.
He also stated that chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao would personally invite some of the American technology company heads during his likely visit to the US. The state government will hand over a cheque for $ 1 million towards the conduct of the event as required, soon.
“Telangana is a start-up state and it needs all the encouragement and blessings of Nasscom and other industry leaders to take steps that lead to a successful journey. We thank Nasscom for choosing Hyderabad as the venue of the event despite the competition from several governments,” the minister said.
