creation of many companies with valuation in excess of US$1 billion across India.

The government is expected to accelerate the creation of public digital infrastructure to streamline existing citizen services and create new services. The India Stack model will be expanded to create industry-specific initiatives in areas such as healthcare, supply chain, and education. This will result in technology getting weaved into the fabric of the Indian workforce across agriculture, healthcare, education, and other industries. Millions of digitally enabled jobs and job categories will be created in the process.

Further, second- and third-tier locations will join India’s software ecosystem due to the strong mobility network, education, and digital infrastructure built over the last decade.

Global companies, Indian IT companies, and start-ups will leverage these cities to drive innovation.

Over the last three decades, India has risen as a technology and software trailblazer, and with concerted efforts by the entire ecosystem including Indian IT companies, multinationals, start-ups, and the government, India has the potential to further establish its standing as a world leader in the software sector.

 

Pankaj Jalote ( [e-mail]) is Distinguished Professor (and founding director 2008–2018) at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), New Delhi, India.

Pari Natarajan ( [e-mail]) is the Chief Operating Officer of Zinnov, Bangalore, India.

Suggested Reading

NASSCOM, Strategic Review: IT-BPM Sector in India 2019: Decoding Digital

NASSCOM, Future Skills—A NASSCOM Initiative

NASSCOM, Women ‘in’Equality—Not Anymore!

NASSCOM-Zinnov, GCC 3.0: Spotlight on Digital, Partnerships, New Delivery Models

& Future Skills, 2019.

NASSCOM-Zinnov, Indian Tech Start-Up Ecosystem 2018: Approaching Escape Velocity

Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Electronics & I (May 3,

2017), Employment Prospects in India’s IT Sector: Robust Outlook

Copyright held by authors/owners.

Publications rights licensed to ACM.

regions like the United States, Mexico, China, Europe, and Australia, employing thousands of software engineers and managers. The Indian IT services industry is estimated to employ a total of 40,000+ locals in the United States alone. Additionally, the industry is also exporting its massive talent training infrastructure to global locations. Tata Consultancy Services has set up a training hub in Cincinnati and is creating a pipeline of graduates coming out of U.S. universities.

The worldwide impact of the Indian software industry is widely evident:

˲ Code written by Indians is present in almost all systems with software, including cars, consumer electronics, enterprise software solutions, industrial products, banking systems, and more;

˲ Indian designers are involved in most chip and system designs by major multinationals;

˲ Indian IT firms have development centers in over 80 countries around the world; and

˲Over 1,000 companies develop global products from their centers in India.

 

Key Lessons

Observing the growth and impact of the Indian IT industry provides a set of valuable lessons that can be replicated for the development of other industries in India and other countries.

Government involvement. Minimal government interference coupled with supportive incentive policies was a key success factor. The Indian government did not regulate the industry and created tax incentives for both importing technology and for revenue from exports.

Skilling and development. Focus on skills and talent development has been instrumental in the growth of the IT industry. Even in their early stages, IT companies spent significant time and money developing the skills of their employees ahead of time. This helped companies rapidly address the changing technology needs of their global customers.

Process orientation. The heightened
focus on process orientation in the
A strong process and continuous im-
provement focus is a catalyst for both
quality and productivity.

Industry collaboration. One key factor in the success of the Indian IT sector has been its ability to bring companies together to develop an industry. The sector has created a huge collaboration ecosystem in the form of an industry body—NASSCOM. The association has helped develop best practices that get disseminated to companies across the sector.

Scale and entrepreneurship. Widespread industry effort to promote, cultivate, and celebrate entrepreneurship has created an ecosystem for entrepreneurs to conceptualize, fund, and scale IT companies. The first generation of entrepreneurs focused on building and scaling IT services companies, while the second is focusing on building IT products and IP-led services companies.

 

The Way Forward

The Indian IT sector is in a unique position to lead global technology innovations over the next decade.

The Indian education infrastructure is being rapidly overhauled by dedicated government initiatives.

The government has announced the creation of 17 new Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) across India to further improve the quality of engineering education. IITs have some of the country’s best engineering faculty and education infrastructure. The millions of engineers who will graduate in the next few years will be adept at machine learning, cloud computing, and other new-age digital technologies. As a result India will continue to be a source of skilled digital talent and intellectual property for more than 2,000 global enterprises.

India’s per capita income is expected to cross US$3,500 by 2025 from the current US$2,000. This will increase discretionary spending by the population, creating a huge consumer market, potentially triggering the next wave of digital entrepreneurs building India-focused technology.

Venture capital activities will increase due to massive domestic opportunities and the ability of Indian start-ups to build global products. The availability of capital will catalyze the