Information technology in India

Information technology in India is an industry consisting of two major components: IT services and business process outsourcing (BPO). The sector has increased its contribution to India's GDP from 1.2% in 1998 to 7.5% in 2012. According to NASSCOM, the sector aggregated revenues of US$147 billion in 2015, where export revenue stood at US$99 billion and domestic at US$48 billion, growing by over 13%. India's prime minister Narendra Modi has started 'Digital India' project to give IT a secured position inside & outside India.

History

Information technology is playing an important role in India today and has transformed India's image from a slow moving bureaucratic economy to a land of innovative The IT sector in India is generating 2.5 million direct employments. India is now one of the biggest IT capitals of the modern world and all the major players in the world IT sector are present in the country.

Bangalore is considered to be the Silicon Valley of India because it is the leading IT exporter. Exports dominate the industry and constitute about 77% of the total industry revenue. However, the domestic market is also significant with a robust revenue growth. The industry’s share of total Indian exports (merchandise plus services) increased from less than 4% in FY1998 to about 25% in FY2012. According to Gartner, the "Top Five Indian IT Services Providers" are Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro , and HCL Technologies.

Regulated VSAT links became visible in 1994. Desai (2006) describes the steps taken to relax regulations on linking in 1991:

In 1991 the Department of Electronics broke this impasse, creating a corporation called Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) that, being owned by the government, could provide VSAT communications without breaching its monopoly. STPI set up software technology parks in different cities, each of which provided satellite links to be used by firms; the local link was a wireless radio link. In 1993 the government began to allow individual companies their own dedicated links, which allowed work done in India to be transmitted abroad directly. Indian firms soon convinced their American customers that a satellite link was as reliable as a team of programmers working in the clients’ office.

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) introduced Gateway Electronic Mail Service in 1991, the 64 kbit/s leased line service in 1992, and commercial Internet access on a visible scale in 1992. Election results were displayed via National Informatics Centre's NICNET.

The Indian economy underwent economic reforms in 1991, leading to a new era of globalisation and international economic integration. Economic growth of over 6% annually was seen during 1993-2002. The economic reforms were driven in part by significant the internet usage in the country. The new administration under Atal Bihari Vajpayee 1999 govt pm—which placed the development of Information Technology among its top five priorities— formed the Indian National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development.

Wolcott & Goodman (2003) report on the role of the Indian National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development:

Within 90 days of its establishment, the Task Force produced an extensive background report on the state of technology in India and an IT Action Plan with 108 recommendations. The Task Force could act quickly because it built upon the experience and frustrations of state governments, central government agencies, universities, and the software industry. Much of what it proposed was also consistent with the thinking and recommendations of international bodies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and World Bank. In addition, the Task Force incorporated the experiences of Singapore and other nations, which implemented similar programs. It was less a task of invention than of sparking action on a consensus that had already evolved within the networking community and government.

"The New Telecommunications Policy, 1999" (NTP 1999) helped further liberalise India's telecommunications sector. The Information Technology Act 2000 created legal procedures for electronic transactions and e-commerce.

Throughout the 1990s, another wave of Indian professionals entered the United States. The number of Indian Americans reached 1.7 million by 2000. This immigration consisted largely of highly educated technologically proficient workers. Within the United States, Indians fared well in science, engineering, and management. Graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) became known for their technical skills. The success of Information Technology in India not only had economic repercussions but also had far-reaching political consequences. India's reputation both as a source and a destination for skilled workforce helped it improve its relations with a number of world economies. The relationship between economy and technology—valued in the western world—facilitated the growth of an entrepreneurial class of immigrant Indians, which helped aid in promoting technology-driven growth.

The India Startup Ecosystem TimeLine has been compiled with key events from the IT industry, including software services, MNCs, and startups.

Recent development

In ongoing market India is the largest exporter of IT.The biggest economic effect of the technologically inclined services sector in India—accounting for 40% of the country's GDP and 30% of export earnings as of 2006, while employing only 25% of its workforce—is summarized by Sharma (2006): "Today, Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India and contributes 38% of Indian IT Exports. India's second and third largest software companies are headquartered in Bangalore, as are many of the global SEI-CMMI Level 5 Companies. Hyderabad, Pune and Gurgaon are also emerging as a Tech hub of the county with many global It giants headquarters followed by Chennai. Numerous IT companies are also based in Mumbai.

Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), the capital of Kerala state, is the foremost among the Tier II cities that is rapidly growing in terms of IT infrastructure. As the software hub of Kerala, more than 80% of the state's software exports are from here. Major campuses and headquarters of companies such as Infosys, Oracle Corporation, IBS Software Services and UST Global are located in the city. India's biggest IT company Tata Consultancy Services is building the country's largest IT training facility in Trivandrum—the project is worth INR10 billion and will have a capacity of 10,000 seats. The completion of the facility is expected in 2014 or 2015.

On 25 June 2002, India and the European Union agreed to bilateral cooperation in the field of science and technology. A joint EU-India group of scholars was formed on 23 November 2001 to further promote joint research and development. India holds observer status at CERN, while a joint India-EU Software Education and Development Center will be located in Bangalore.

Major information technology hubs

Position		Description
1	Bangalore	Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India and the IT Capital of India. It is considered to be a global information technology hub and largest software exports from India are done through Bangalore. Some of the top Indian IT service providers like Infosys, Wipro, Mindtree and Mphasis are headquartered in Bangalore. It is also the country headquarters to many top firms like Intel, Texas Instruments, Bosch, Yahoo, SAP Labs, Continental among others. Bangalore alone consists of more than 35% of all the IT companies present in India and contains close to 5000 companies, making it the largest IT contributor in India.
2	Hyderabad	Hyderabad is known as the HITEC City or Cyberabad, and is a major global information technology hub and second largest IT exporter and the largest bioinformatics hub of India. It has become the first destination for the Microsoft development center in India and the largest software development center outside of their headquarters in Redmond, USA. Microsoft, Facebook,Apple Inc, Infosys, Google, Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, Computer Sciences Corporation, Accenture, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, HCL, Cyient, IGATE, Capgemini, Amazon.com, Dell, Deloitte etc., and close to 2000 companies operate from the city.
3	Chennai	Chennai is the third largest exporter of IT and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) of India. Some of the major companies having operation centers at Chennai are Accenture, Cognizant, TCS, Syntel, Wipro, Infosys, Verizon, HCL, Amazon.com, eBay, Paypal, Polaris, Patni, Capgemini and many major global providers. The city has a world class IT infrastructures with dedicated expressway nicknamed as IT expressways, and many other IT parks promoted by both government and private entities. The city's strong industrial base also favors the setting up of many major R&D centers in its vicinity.
4	Mumbai	Regarded as the financial capital of India, Mumbai is headquarters to Tata Consultancy Services, which is India's largest IT company. Other major IT companies based in the city are Patni, L&T Infotech, 3i Infotech, Mastek and Oracle FinServ.
5	Delhi	The National Capital Region comprising Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida are clusters of software development.
6	Pune	Pune is one of the leading Indian and international IT services and outsourcing exporters. The next biggest IT park of India (Rajiv Gandhi IT Park at Hinjewadi) is expected to scale up to phase 7. It is also known as the Tech City, which consists of many multinational corporation companies such as TCS, Tech Mahindra, Capgemini, Syntel, Infosys, Cognizant, Cybage, Capgemini, Persistent, MphasiS,Accenture, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Zensar, IBM, IGATE, Red Hat, Avaya, HSBC, BMC Software, Larsen & Toubro Infotech etc.
7	Kolkata	Kolkata is a major city with multinational corporations such as IBM India, Cognizant, Accenture, Capgemini, WIPRO, ITC, Texas Instruments, Cisco Systems, Deloitte, Oracle Corporation, Siemens, Honeywell, PWC, Mphasis, Genpact, NIIT Technologies etc. Kolkata achieved a global rank of 23 among 100 global offshore destination cities, as per a survey conducted by Tholons in 2015.

Employment generation

This sector has also led to massive employment generation. The industry continues to be a net employment generator — expected to add 230,000 jobs in fiscal year 2012, thus providing direct employment to about 2.8 million, and indirectly employing 8.9 million people, making it a dominant player in the global outsourcing sector. However, it continues to face challenges of competitiveness in the globalized and modern world, particularly from countries like China and Philippines.

India's growing stature in the Information Age enabled it to form close ties with both the United States of America and the European Union. However, the recent global financial crises have deeply impacted the Indian IT companies as well as global companies. As a result, hiring has dropped sharply, and employees are looking at different sectors like financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing industries, which have been growing phenomenally over the last few years. India's IT Services industry was born in Mumbai in 1967 with the establishment of Tata Group in partnership with Burroughs. The first software export zone SEEPZ was set up here way back in 1973, the old avatar of the modern day IT park. More than 80 percent of the country's software exports happened out of SEEPZ, Mumbai in 1980s.

Future outlook

The Indian IT market currently focuses on providing low cost solution in the services business of global IT. Presence of Indian companies in the product development business of global IT is very meagre, however, this number is slowly on the raise. US giants that outsource work to India, do not allocate the high end SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) processes like requirement analysis, high level design and architectural design, although some Indian IT players have enough competency to take up and successfully complete these high level software jobs. The other prominent trend is, IT jobs, that were earlier confined to Bangalore, are slowly starting to experience a geographical diffuse into other cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. The growth is not fast paced, this, can be largely attributed to the lethargic attitude of the government in providing proper telecommunication infrastructure. The penetration levels are higher for mobile, but, the speed at which the backbone infrastructure works (network speed) and the coverage it offers are far below what other countries of the world have currently in offer.

Research and Development- The new drivers

The research in the industry was earlier concentrated towards programming technologies like Java, in the recent times, the research focus changed towards technologies like mobile computing, cloud computing and software as a service. This shift is attributed to preference of clients towards the ubiquitous computing over standalone computing and the growing demand for low cost computing solutions.

See also

• Supercomputing in India
• HITEC City
• List of Indian IT companies
• PARAM

Further reading

• Eijaj, Steve, E-Commerce. (2006: from Computers and Information Systems), Encyclopædia Britannica 2008.
• Chand, Vikram K. (2006), Reinventing public service delivery in India: Selected Case Studies, Sage Publications, ISBN 0-7619-3489-8.
• Desai, Ashok V. (2006), "Information and other Technology Development", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 269–273, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31351-0.
• Kamdar, Mira (2006), "Indo -U.S. Relations, Cultural Exchanges in", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 236–239, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31351-0.
• Kapur, Devesh (2006), "Diaspora" in Encyclopedia of India (vol. 1) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 328–331, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31350-2.
• Ketkar, Prafulla (2006), "European Union, Relations with (Science and technology)", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 48–51, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31351-0.
• Nanda, B. R. (2006), "Nehru, Jawaharlal", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 3) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 222–227, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31352-9.
• Rothermund, Dietmar (2006), "Andhra Pradesh", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 1) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 43–44, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31350-2.
• Saraswati, Jyoti. Dot.compradors: Power and Policy in the Development of the Indian Software Industry. London: Pluto, 2012. ISBN 9780745332659.
• Sharma, Jagdish (2006), "Diaspora: History of and Global Distribution", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 1) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 331–336, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31350-2.
• Sharma, Shalendra D. (2006), "Globalization", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 146–149, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31351-0
• Vrat, Prem (2006), "Indian Institutes of Technology", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 229–231, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31351-0.
• Wolcott, P. & Goodman, S. E. (2003), Global Diffusion of the Internet – I India: Is the Elephant Learning to Dance?, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 11: 560-646.

External links

• Home Page | NASSCOM
• NASSCOM Foundation