Kalam urges IT sector to grab 15% global pie

President APJ Abdul Kalam on Wednesday urged the Indian software industry to capture at least a 15 per cent share of the global business in the IT services and IT enabled services (ITES) and business processing outsourcing (BPO) segments. These sectors are expected to be worth around $1.2 trillion by 2008.

Quoting Nasscom estimates, Kalam who was addressing the valedictory session at Nasscom 2005, said the Indian software industry is today nearly $28 billion, contributing to about 24 per cent of the nation's exports.

This is through the IT services and ITES-BPO sector, which accounts for around 3.5 per cent of the global market.

The business volume in these two sectors alone accounts for $850 billion.

The first aim of the industry should be to capture at least 15 per cent of the global business volume in these two sectors, he said.

"Small aim is a crime. I consider this as doable, since our university system is contributing over two million graduates including engineers every year. This is a vital resource needed for growth in the IT Services, ITES and BPO," he said.

According to him, the objective should be to increase the knowledge pool to five million Indian youth by 2008, which will enhance the existing efficiency by the factor of two.

He pointed out that last month, the Indian IT sector reached a milestone of having more than one million software professionals employed by the industry.

He acknowledged the growth in outsourcing despite the worldwide reluctance.

This, according to him, shows the unquestionable quality of Indian software professionals and the fact that India is the ultimate destination for all IT-related activities.

He urged the governments, industry and the academia to work together to develop and market intellectual property products which can help increase the per capita revenue non-linearly for Indian software industries.

He said the software industry has to move up the value chain and come up with innovative products that will have an order of magnitude commercial impact in the international market.

"This knowledge product development is a challenging area such as embedded software, networking software, real time software, and integrated software for bio, info and nano. But if we are looking for non-linear growth in future years, it is an essential step that the ICT community should venture today with confidence and become a knowledge product community," he said.

If frontline IT companies are hesitant to venture into this area, Nasscom should create consortiums of budding IT companies which can undertake this challenging mission.

India, he pointed out, had missed the micro electronic bus. And now with nano technology knocking at their doors, the industry had better not ignore it.

He said if proper investment decisions are taken, the industry can definitely aspire to become leaders in nano technology products, especially in the nano electronics area, which has a market potential of $300 billion.

"India should now invest to the tune of $300 million towards the nano science and technology research in partnership with like-minded MNCs for research, development and volume production of nano electronic devices, including nano computers with time-bound mission mode programmes," he said.

This requires collective efforts between the industry, academic institutions, research and development laboratories and the government for having integrated development of infrastructure, human resources, product design, manufacturing and marketing. The academic institutions have to gear up for such a challenging mission.