Nasscom on track to boost product cos

In its first year of existence, Nasscom's product forum has taken several initiatives to encourage product development among India's software companies, Som Mittal, the Nasscom chairman, told Business Standard on the sidelines of the product and embedded software summit held here today as part of IT.Com.

In seeking to develop product companies, Nasscom is promoting both the ideas of 'Made in India' and 'India Inside', the latter highlighting the fact that a lot of work done in India goes into products that get globally distributed.

The forum has identified shrink-wrapped applications for small and medium businesses (SMBs) as a somewhat vacant niche on which the Indian companies can concentrate. The needs of these companies in the $ 100-200 million turnover space in the emerging markets are different and they can be addressed by the upcoming small Indian product companies.

Serving them can be a first step towards developing products which can be tested on smaller clients before addressing larger markets.

Another area identified is the embedded space (software for silicon). Use of embedded software (in automobiles to home appliances) is proliferating. What is more, global companies like Texas Instruments and Philips have created considerable Indian expertise in this space by outsourcing work to local companies.

The forum has also conducted a 'spot the star' contest and put them on the Nasscom website as a way of sharing best practices. In the process, the work of established software product companies like i-flex and Sassken has been highlighted as role models.