The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) today announced the names of the top 10 Information Technology startups for 2010 at the Delhi edition of the NASSCOM EMERGOUT CONCLAVE 2010. The winners, chosen from a total of 236 initial applicants, include companies that provide a range of IT services covering healthcare, education and training, banking, travel and social networking.
The focus of this year’s Emerge Conclave was on exploring how emerging and start-up companies can build economic value out of emerging web based social platforms, mobile and AppStore. AppStores give small software developers an opportunity to be discovered and a fair chance of "trial" by a large number of consumers. Decent applications have a chance of getting picked up by community references and pick up significant number of users. At pricing levels of $0.99 to $4.99 the AppStore economy has turned software applications into consumer commodities and leverages the large mobile and broadband population to drive large revenues and profitability.
The AppStore economy has yet to hit India in a big way. While some Indian product developers have already published their wares to global AppStores, the true success will emerge once we have localized & customized apps for the Indian consumers on Indian AppStores. The telcos are already investing in the infrastructure. The handset trends are slowly inching their way to smartphone dominance. With the imminent launch of 3G services in the country, it is ripe time for blossoming of the AppStore economy.
Speaking at the Conclave, Mr. Som Mittal, President Nasscom said, “The SME segment represents a huge opportunity for India to retain its competitive advantage and sustain future growth. Over the past few years Indian SMEs, which are a significant contributor to the IT industry, have excelled in building niche products and services and tapping non-core markets. We are proud of not only the winners but all applicants that have showcased an unparalleled spirit of entrepreneurship.”
In the last four years, the software products industry has experienced high growth in revenues due to the increasing focus of Indian companies towards product development and in 2005-09; more than 500 software product companies were launched. From FY07 to FY09, revenues for the software product industry increased by about 58% and the share of the software products segment in the total Indian IT-BPO industry reached around 6.5% in FY09. Software products are increasingly becoming popular among startups with around 67% of all startups set up between 2007 and 2010 focusing on product development
The entrepreneurial-friendly environment in the country is enabling the growth of software product development start-ups. There are about 38 incubator centres in the country, which have already helped develop close to 28 software product companies. On the investment front, the venture capital and angel funding activities for the software products segment have been quite encouraging. In FY05–07, the VC investments in the industry doubled to reach more than USD 150 million. These growth factors are expected to help the industry grow at a CAGR of more than 25% over FY09–15 and attain revenues of USD 9.5–12 billion.
While initial product start-ups focused on solutions related to the BFSI segment, and ERP/CRM tools, new product start-ups are increasingly focusing on areas such as security, storage, telecom and mobile VAS, embedded and business intelligence solutions which not only provide access to untapped markets, but also favorable exit options. SaaS and Virtualisation are impacting the growth of these categories of software due to more cost effective solutions becoming available.
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About NASSCOM EMERGEOUT
The NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Forum serves as a platform to the Indian SME segment to share experiences, ally on critical projects and even focus on partnerships to cater to customer demands. It acts as a catalyst for growth of emerging and start-up companies. The NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave is a series of Conferences held across cities in India, starting off with Chennai and Delhi every year. It aims to be a collaborative initiative by the EMERGE Community to leverage on the knowledge base and look at strategies which have the potential and wherewithal to tap into the Emerging Market.
The mandate of the EMERGE forum is to act as a catalyst for growth for emerging and start-up companies. The EMERGE forum provides an interactive platform, which helps companies to share information, best practices, network with delegations (inward/outward), define local issues that impact business and offer mentoring from industry experts. SMEs form 74% of the Nasscom membership out of which 65–70% of the SME members have been benefitted from the activities that were initiated as a part of the EMERGE Forum.
About Nasscom
Nasscom® is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India. It is a global trade body with more than 1200 members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. Nasscom's member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPO services, e-commerce & web services, engineering services off-shoring and animation and gaming. Nasscom’s membership base constitutes over 95% of the industry revenues in India and employs over 2.24 million professionals.
About SMs GupShup
SMS GupShup is the world’s largest Social SMS service that allows groups of users to communicate and connect with family, friends and fans using mobile handsets. Founded by seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and incubated at the IIT Bombay Business Incubator, the company is funded by Charles River Ventures, Helion Ventures and Globespan Capital.
SMS GupShup extends the capabilities of p2p sms technology to social messaging including 1-to-many, many-to-many and many-to-1 communication, thereby enabling social interactions on sms, the only medium that reaches 4 billion users worldwide. Launched in April 2007, it is used by 34 million users in 3.5 million communities.
Brands and enterprises use the SMS GupShup platform for reach based advertising, promotions, customer engagement and Mobile CRM. Carriers use the reply-all capability of SMS GupShup to increase ARPU and loyalty of their subscriber base. SMS GupShup also sells premium content and services to consumers.
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