The information technology sector in West Bengal were well placed to serve clients in areas like engineering services, security software and animation and gaming software, said experts at an information technology meet here in the city.
Engineering services had huge market potential and was slated to grow from $4 billion now to $40 billion by 2020, said Kiran Karnik, immediate past president of Nasscom.
India's total software exports were around $40 billion last fiscal and the target this year was $60 billion.
The next stage of growth in the Indian IT industry would be driven by development of new products and intellectual property, Karnik said at ICT East 2008 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Kolkata and Chennai indicated great potential in the area of developing security software that entailed analysis of complex mathematical algorithms, he added.
West Bengal planned to develop these areas, claimed state IT minister Debesh Das.
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He said Bengal was looking at wooing animation and gaming companies to set up shop here.
DQ Entertainment of Hyderabad, in the animation and gaming space, was here already, Das said.
Bengal was focusing on increasing software exports from the state, he added.
The IT industry in West Bengal registered a 45.6 per cent growth in last year against national average of 29 per cent but its share in net software exports from the country was only 3 per cent.
One of the key strategies for moving up the value chain was overseas acquisitions, said Ajai Chowdhury, chairman and chief executive officer of HCL Infosystems and the chairman of the national committee on IT of CII.