IT & telecom sector saw substantial growth: Nasscom

Says Indian hardware industry has become "far weaker" at least in relation to the global industy

While the country's information technology and telecom industries have reported a substantial growth, the Indian hardware industry has been a victim, said R Chandrashekhar, president, Nasscom.

Speaking at Centre for Technology and Policy inauguration function at IIT Madras, he said the sector (electronic hardware) had suffered from a ‘competitive disability’ when compared with countries.

"This sector suffers from competitive disability when compared with countries like China. It is completely out of control of the industry on issues like power, cost and uncertainty on issues like logistics," said Chandrashekhar.

Some of the reasons, which affected the industry, according to him include high finance cost. In a high velocity, high volume and low margin industry, how do you overcome this without some measure aimed at boosting the performance of that sector? he questioned.

Speaking about the telecom sector, he said, while the Government has undertaken a massive programme, with an outlay of around Rs20,000 crore, to take the optic fibre to every Panchayat, the challenge is how to such a large infrastructure gets used, how do you ensure that the application and content and the capabilities built in the IT space can be brought into the ecosystem