Software Firms Log In 52% Growth

During the calendar year 1999, the Indian software industry has achieved a growth of 52 per cent at $5 billion over $3.9 billion during 1998 and is poised to grow at 60 per cent to reach $8 billion during the year 2000.

Out of the $5 billion earnings, the contribution of export earnings was $3.5 billion while the domestic earnings was $1.5 billion.

According to Dewang Mehta, president, Nasscom, which made the predictions based on its recently conducted study, "the 60 per cent projected growth during the year 2000 proves the point that the Indian software industry is not dependent merely on Y2K revenues."

 

According to the Nasscom survey, there was a slow down of Y2K orders in the last two quarters in the year 1999. However, the slowdown was more than offset by new opportunities created in growth areas such as e-commerce and IT enabled services, which accounted to almost 16 per cent of the export revenues generated in the second half of 1999.

"As Indian software companies successfully completed Y2K related projects for more than 104 of the Fortune 500 companies, most of these companies are now getting repeat orders for software projects to India as they have developed confidence and faith in the Indian software industry," Mehta said.

E-commerce, application service providers, IT enabled service, legacy to web transformation, communications software and system on chip are projected to be the prominent emerging sectors for software exports in the years to come.

The domestic software market has also grown from $1 billion in 1998 to $1.5 billion in 1999 and is expected to grow to $2.2 billion in 2000. "The key segments contributing to the growth in the domestic market will be in the areas of banking, Internet banking, e-governance, healthcare, defense and small office home office," he said.