Indian BFSI firms top IT spenders: IDC

The average IT spend, in Telecom and BFSI per company touched Rs 191.6 crore and Rs 87.5 crore respectively in 2007-08, says a Dataquest-IDC survey study.

In the BFSI segment, large investments were also made by LIC, NSDL, National Insurance, New India Insurance and Oriental Insurance, wheras Bharti, BSNL, Hutch, MTNL, Reliance Telecom and VSNL are some of the top IT spenders in Telecom.

 

The BFSI sector invested 1.5 per cent compared to the overall industry average IT spend of 0.63 per cent of the revenue in IT. The utilities sector led in terms of IT spend per employee, with a budget of Rs 83,000 per employee, much above the overall industry average of Rs 36,000 per employee.

The survey conducted among 211 large IT user firms in India said, that these firms spent 27 per cent more on IT in 2007-08 as compared to 2006-07. Apart from these two sectors, IT investments in the retail sector grew the highest at 43 per cent. The average IT spend for a retail player was Rs 7.4 crore.

"We did expect the Retail sector to be a heavy investor in IT. But this young sector is also showing surprising maturity on the IT adoption curve. For instance, through its clear preference for off-the-shelf, packaged software, rather than the tedious custom development that most other sectors go through," says Prasanto K Roy, Chief Editor, Dataquest.

The study also pointed that lower growth in IT investments is expected across all sectors in 2008-09 except the pharmaceuticals and biotech sector, that is expected to invest about one-fifth more than their IT investments in 2007-08.