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Derisive remarks such as B2B now implying “ Back-to-Bangalore” and B2C now
standing for “ Back-to-Chennai” are not really accurate. Besides, the sunny side to
the issue is that the off-shore market has the capacity to absorb this returning
workforce.
The Indian software industry is meanwhile already undertaking significant measures
to face the challenges ahead. For one, NASSCOM and its software brigade will be
conducting road shows across the US during April and June 2001.
In 2000, 185 of the
Fortune 500
companies outsourced their software requirements to
India. The idea through the road shows, will be to target the remainder 315
Fortune
500
organizations and convince them about the viability of outsourcing their software
requirements to India.
Such road shows will also spotlight the Indian software industry’s
expertise in segments such as IT-enabled services especially call centers and
back-office operations. An extremely positive response to the Indian pavilion
at the recently held global conference and exhibition, CeBit in Germany has
also given software companies cause for encouragement. Indian participants
received more business queries than ever before. This suggests that Europe has woken
up to India’s potential and Japan too is a new emerging market.
The NASSCOM-McKinsey report has estimated that the Indian software industry
will achieve US$50 billion of exports in 2008. Logically, to reach that target, the
software industry needs to grow only at 35 percent annually. The industry will
undoubtedly achieve that goal and possibly even exceed it by logging in growth
rates of around 40-50 percent.
It goes to the credit of the software industry in India that when other segments
and other industries are growing at 10-15 percent per annum, the sector is surging
ahead at 40-50 percent levels. That to my mind reflects the real success of Indian
software exports. The only hope is that in this Internet age, even the upswing will
probably be equally quick. Moreover, many experts believe that the slowdown may
not last more than two to three quarters.
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