The Evolution of Indian IT Industry

The National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) today released a report titled ‘India in Globalized Services: Innovating @ Scale’ – a year-long study capturing perspectives from industry stakeholders to understand the role and expectations from the Indian technology and services industry and its journey over the last 25 years. The report addresses theshift in customer expectations from efficiency to innovation and transformation, and highlights the transition of the industry over the years to become the ‘partner of choice’ for global enterprises.

According to the report, in the last decade India’s role has evolved from an arbitrage & talent led provider to a transformative partner, delivering significant business impact.  Innovation has been at the core of this journey as this industry was born out of innovation in the form of the Global Delivery Model. With revenues approaching USD 150 billion and a market share of over 50% and a workforce of over 3.5 million employees directly serving the industry, India is today at the epicenter of the global services space.

Some highlights from the study:

• Over the years expectations of customers have shifted beyond efficiency
• The top expectations beyond cost for customers include innovation and business impact
• India’s role has evolved and in the last 5-10 years is increasingly delivering innovation and business impact
• R&D spend is growing, with MNCS R&D centers growing over 14% making India a source for path breaking innovation
• Third largest start up base estimated to grow 4X to reach 10,000 by 2020 driving ‘innovation at scale’
• Co-innovation by players and corporate venturing to access innovation

Neeraj Aggarwal, Senior Partner and Director, BCG, said, “We see the industry at an inflexion point today. We see a conscious focus on building deeper industry capabilities, co-innovating with partners and corporate venturing supported by a vibrant startup ecosystem and increased R&D focus to provide access to innovation. Over the last two decades, we have seen the journey from cost and process excellence to also being an innovation and transformation partner. This is happening across the board. Today there is a strong platform and going forward, we will see further amplification of this trend.”