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'India need to upgrade IT skills, invest in R&D'

Upgradation of skills, investment in research and development and 'selling' the India brand abroad were some of the recommendations made by Indian and international CEOs to propel the Indian IT industry to the next level.

These recommendations were made at a brainstorming workshop titled 'Beyond a back-office: Identifying new niches for technological growth' at the India Economic Summit jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and World Economic Forum, in New Delhi on Monday.

The discussions and deliberations of this workshop were carried out under four topics: software and services; business process outsourcing; bioinformatics and manufacturing design.

On behalf of the software and services group, Lauren L Hall, Director, Technology Policy, Advanced Strategies and Policies, Microsoft Corporation, USA, spelled out the recommendations.

She mentioned that 'selling Indian success stories' overseas was of foremost importance. Sustaining the India's reputation in the segment was another important recommendation of the group, which could be done by constantly improving the infrastructure and quality of education.

A third suggestion from the group was that the government should establish itself as an important consumer and a model user of software and services.

And finally, the software and services companies in India needed to leverage the domestic markets in order to successfully drive competitiveness.

Ravi Kushan, managing director, A T Kearney, India, was of the view that business process outsourcing suffered from four major problems; marketing the Indian brand, infrastructure and security, high end talent and 'absence of value capture' in Europe.

As a solution to these, the group suggested co-ordinated and intense marketing efforts; nurturing of talent by BPO companies; addressing security perceptions and correcting and rectifying the negative perception of the business in Europe.

For the Bioinformatics group, Sunil Wadhwani, chief executive officer and co-founder, iGATE Corporation, USA began by identifying the opportunities and strengths for India in the segment.

He mentioned that the market is going to be worth $20 billion in the next five years, and India had the essential human resources to capture a large chunk of the market.

On the flip side, however, industry in India currently suffered from lack of investment and people who were adept at both information technology and biosciences.

To overcome the lacuna, the group suggested the need:

• To spread awareness about the potential of the segment among industry, government and youth;
• Set up interdisciplinary and collaborative programmes in the existing technical institutes:
• Set up alliances between institutes in India and key research institutes overseas;
• Encourage venture capital investment; and finally,
• Entice back to India the non-resident high achievers or to encourage them to collaborate with Indian companies.

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