IT Prowess

Information Technology sector is the first sector to put India on the global map.The exports in this sector was about 47 Billion dollars for 2009 and it is expected to grow to 60 billion dollars in the coming year.Almost all the major IT players have a R&D facility in the country which shows the vast talent pool available in the country.The future offers unlimited potential for the India's leading IT players but we still do have a lot of challenges as we try to compete for a larger share of the pie from the market leaders.

One of the main advantages that the Indian companies enjoy is low costs due to cheap labor force. With continuous success this cost advantage is slowly getting eroded as pay scales are increasing on a yearly basis.If we look around a lot of other cheap IT Outsourcing destinations such China,Indonesia and Latin American countries are coming up and competing fiercely with India.China may not be a serious competitor now but in the coming years they pose a serious threat.Relying on the cost factor alone will make us loose our market share in the future.

Indian companies should step up the research spending so that we can move up the value chain quickly to get more high profile projects.Instead of just increasing the head counts companies should look at alternatives to come up with business solutions that would boost their revenues through product offerings.This would transform the Indian companies to gain a strong foot hold in the industry.

Human capital continues to pose a great challenge to the Indian companies.The college curriculum should be reformed to suit the industry's needs so that the students are more ready to fit the needs of the companies. Otherwise IT companies need to spend more money to train the students for their jobs.Even with such vast talent pool we only have a lot of service oriented companies and the product oriented Indian companies have enjoyed little success. In spite of the fact that more than 40% of the startups at silicon valley are by Indians we are yet to see such success in India.This can be attributed to Brian Drain as more number of talented students try to do their PG in American universities.Government must take steps to improve the infrastructure of the schools and colleges.Our nation needs more IIMs and IITs to break the barriers in our path to Growth.