Futures 56 (2014) 7380

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Futures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Indian IT outsourcing industry: Future threats and challenges

Dinesh C. Sharma
A-65, Parwana Apartments, Mayur Vihar Phase I Extension, New Delhi 110091, India

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Available online 17 October 2013

The Indian Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry has

often been a subject of envy among developing economies, for the rapid growth it has
recorded in the past two decades. From being a destination of low-cost technical labour
and a pioneer of body shopping model, the industry has transformed itself into a USD 100
billion behemoth engaged in offering a wide range of services including high-end R&D.
However, the growth engine appears to be slowing down as India begins to lose its
competitive advantages. The future of Indian IT-BPO industry depends on three key factors
availability of quality manpower, capability of Indian industry to move up the value
chain from customized development and maintenance services to innovation, R&D and
product development, and the growth in domestic IT consumption in order to reduce
dependence on export markets. On all the three counts, the future scenario is subject to
uncertainties. The industry is also unprepared for disruptive technologies of future such as
quantum computing and nano computing.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Outsourcing
Business process outsourcing
Quantum computing
Nano computing
Information technology
IT enabled services
Demographic dividend
Body shopping
Knowledge process outsourcing
R & D services
Global delivery model
Disruptive technologies
Cloud computing
Custom application software

In March 2013, something unusual happened in Bangalore the city which houses the high technology cluster popularly
known as Indias Silicon Valley. A group of youngsters all engineering graduates from different colleges were seen
protesting outside the corporate ofce of HCL Technologies, Indias fourth largest information technology (IT) company. They
were holding placards which read HR, Give us DoJ (date of joining). It was a rare sight in the countrys software and services
capital which counts Whos Who of national and global technology industry among its inhabitants. It seems the young
engineers were recruited from campuses across the country in September 2011 and were given letters of intent so that they
could join the rm after they nished the course. Instead of giving them letters of appointments, HCL delayed joining dates at
least ve times and then introduced a new screening process in August 2012 [1]. Even after this test, few were actually given
jobs. Some 5000 such engineers were recruited from campuses in Bangalore, Chennai, Noida, Hyderabad and Pune.
A few years back such a scene would have been unimaginable because Indian IT companies such as HCL claim to follow the
best HR practices in the world and treat employees on par with customers. Moreover, it is on the back of young engineering
talent that this industry has expanded a great deal in the past two decades. Fresh engineering graduates have been in great
demand all these years as entry-level computer coders. Even those passing out from colleges with average standard of
education would get job offers from competing rms before nishing their course. The same held true for non-engineering
graduates who were readily absorbed in the ever growing Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) rms, which together make up
the 100 billion dollar IT-BPO industry of India. The protests in Bangalore showed that all is not well with the industry.
The changing scenario is not limited to HCL but is reective of a silent change occurring in the industry in the past few
years and is a good indicator of an emerging picture of the future. Companies are reducing the size of bench pool the
number of staffers hired in anticipation of outsourcing contracts and kept idle or in training before deployment. They are also
hiring skilled people from within the industry. In addition, many processes for which the industry hired entry level engineers
E-mail address: dineshcsharma@gmail.com.
0016-3287/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2013.10.011

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D.C. Sharma / Futures 56 (2014) 7380

are being automated. The situation is no better in the BPO segment of the industry. It was predicted a few years back that
India could lose its pre-eminent position in the IT-BPO position to other low-cost and me too destinations in future. That
future is already here. It is estimated that India has lost nearly one million jobs in the call centre business to other
destinations such as the Philippines and Romania in the past ve years, according to industry veterans [2].
Where does the Indian IT-BPO industry go from this point? What are the challenges and threats it would face? What does
India need to do to stay ahead of the curve in the years to come? Will the focus of Indian IT industry shift from exports to
domestic markets? Will the knowledge industry go beyond information and communication technology and expand to other
emerging areas such as biotechnology and energy? What are disruptive technological changes that will inuence the future
of this industry? The paper seeks to explore some of these questions.
1. The journey till now
In order to sketch a future scenario for the IT industry, it is important to understand the success India has achieved in this
eld so far and how it has reached this stage. Contrary to the popular perception about this industry being a product of
liberalization, the success seen in the past two decades is a result of a long chain of events which got initiated soon after the
independence. Computing and commercial data processing came to India almost at the same time as in the West, and it
developed as part of the larger project of organizing science soon after the country gained independence in August 1947 [3].
The early introduction of modern computers at scientic institutions like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and
academic centres like the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, coupled with the use of commercial data processing
machines of IBM and ICL by industry and large users like the Indian Railways, helped build initial skills in software writing,
hardware maintenance and related work in the 1960s and the 1970s. The introduction of minicomputers in the 1970s, after
the era of IBM mainframe ended, further helped in software writing skills of Indian engineers on a variety of platforms and
also in establishing links with customers in the US. But a closed economy stied growth of hardware industry.
The rst wave of liberalization came in the 1980s with gradual lowering of import duties on electronics, computers,
peripherals and systems software. A push to domestic consumption came in the form of large state-funded initiatives such as
National Informatics Centre Network (Nicnet), the railway passenger reservation project and banking computerization. Though
American rms like semiconductor designer Texas Instruments and software rm Burroughs (through their joint venture with
the Tatas) had dedicated facilities for software exports, the breakthrough moment for smaller, home-made Indian software
rms came when exports via satellite communication facilities set up by the government became a reality. The Software
Technology Park (STP) scheme, which became fully operational only in the early the early 1990s, facilitated Indian companies to
enter the American technology markets despite the handicap of size, distance and lack of physical infrastructure.
In the 2000s, the IT services industry added another dimension in the form of a range of services under the label of BPO or
IT Enabled services (ITES). These included medical transcription, call centre operations for airlines, banks, insurance as well
as technology companies. The backroom services being offered from India for American corporations kept on increasing till
mid-2000s, earning India the sobriquet of the worlds back ofce or the call centre of the world. The IT-BPO sector clocked
aggregate revenues of USD 88.1 billion in 20102011, with the software and services sector alone accounting for USD 76.2
billion of revenues. Software and services exports made up more than a quarter of total Indian exports in 201011 [4]. The
next year, the IT-BPO industry-aggregate revenues crossed USD 100 billion mark with exports at USD 69 billion.

D.C. Sharma / Futures 56 (2014) 7380

75

Source for both the tables: Report of the Working Group on Information Technology for Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012
2017), Planning Commission, Government of India.
While the size of the industry and exports are seen growing, the growth rates have been falling from 32.6% in 200607 to
1214% projected for 201314 [5]. In the years to come, the industry may see just single digit growth. A large part of the
decline in growth rate is attributed to increasing revenue base and comparable offshore employee base of MNCs like IBM and
Accenture in India as well as unfavourable macro-environment. Indias share in BPO sourcing market has declined from 45%
in 2005 to 34% in 2010 [4]. China, Philippines, Vietnam, Poland, Hungary, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt are emerging as competitive
locations. The Philippines is already half the size of the Indian ITES/BPO industry and is expected to grow at a rapid pace.
Since it is less capital intensive and its operations are exible, customer support operations can be relocated from one
country to another in comparatively short time.
2. Demographic dividend mirage
The future of Indian IT-BPO industry depends on three key factors availability of quality manpower, capability of Indian
industry to move up the value chain from technology services to innovation, R&D and product development, and the growth
in domestic IT consumption in order to reduce dependence on export markets.
One of the most critical contributors to the genesis and development of this industry is human capital. The investments
India made in world class engineering education and research institutions in the formative years of this industry have
propelled it into the world of high technology. Just as South East Asian countries invested in physical infrastructure to enter
technology manufacturing markets, human capital helped India do the same with global software markets. It had both the
numbers as well as quality. In the 21st century, however, both these advantages are seen eroding. While India has scaled up
numbers it produced about half a million engineering graduates in 2012 the quality is less than desired. A number of
industry and other surveys have shown that a bulk of these graduates are not industry-ready and not readily employable.
Industry has to invest in training, for which some of the top companies have even tied up with educational institutions.
Training costs add to the problem of constantly dropping margins. Secondly, the number of highly specialized people Ph Ds
in engineering is too low for India to make a sizeable dent in the research and innovation markets.

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D.C. Sharma / Futures 56 (2014) 7380

Source: India Science and Technology 201112, National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, New
Delhi, India.

Very often industry bodies and government think tanks project the so-called demographic dividend as a favourabale
factor for India to achieve a leadership position in the knowledge industry in future. By 2030, India is projected to surpass
China as the most populous nation and will be home to one of the largest pools of people in working age. The basis of the
demographic advantage argument is that the average age in India in 2020 will be 29 years compared with 37 in China and the
United States, 45 in Western Europe, and 48 in Japan. In 2025, nearly 70% of Indians will be of working age, up from gure of
61% in 2010. The Indian Labour Report projects that 300 million youth would enter the labour market by 2025 and 25% of the
worlds workers in the next three years would be Indians [6]. But all this will not automatically make the country a potential
supplier of employable manpower to the world.

Young people will need to be educated, skilled and trained in order to make any meaningful contribution to the emerging
knowledge markets including the IT outsourcing business. There are huge gaps to be lled and one does not see any
concerted plan to do so among policy planners and the government. The number of higher technical education institutions
Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and
private engineering colleges is multiplying. The numbers will certainly grow, but quality still remains an issue. Even top
technical education institutes are facing faculty shortage. The engineering graduates lack soft skills knowledge of English,
communication, team working, self-learning needed for success in service industry.
The advantage of India having a large English-knowing engineering workforce has already eroded. An English Comprehension
Test taken by 55,000 engineering students in 2011 showed that over 25% of them did not possess comprehension skills to
understand engineering curriculum in English, while 5060% were unable to construct grammatically correct sentences even
for basic communication such as emails [7]. A separate test to assess their engineering skills revealed that 30% of engineering
graduates were unt for entry-level jobs. For instance, 42% of them could not multiply or divide decimal numbers. The main
reason for voice-based customer support business moving to the Philippines is the heavy English accent of Indians.
Between 2010 and 2030, Indias total working-age population is poised to rise from 749 million to 962 million. In contrast,
the working-age population of China will shrink by 45 million during the same period. Though India will have the worlds
largest pool of working-age people by 2030, if the current trend in labour participation continues, only 539 million out of 962
million people of working age would be working by 2030 [6]. This means a bulk of the people in working age will not be
employed. In the absence of any signicant reforms in school and higher education, the quality of Indias labour force would
remain below par. The scene would be no different when it comes to higher education. While engineer turnout will go on
increasing, their employability will diminish further. As a result of this mismatch between skills and industry requirements,
most industries including IT services, will face a talent bottleneck.
The Indian government has initiated a programme for revival of technical and vocational education polytechnics and
industrial technical institutes along with focus on skill development across sectors keeping in mind the shift of Indian
economy from agriculture to services. Unless this programme takes off with full energy, along with quality improvements in
education at all levels, the talent scenario would be bleak and the so-called demographic dividend may end up being
demographic burden. The education system needs to be reformed at all levels, with reorientation of classroom teaching and
learning objectives right from the primary school. The focus should be on learning, creativity and skills rather than mere
schooling. This would help arrest high dropout rates and boost education of girls. The concept of nishing school can help

D.C. Sharma / Futures 56 (2014) 7380

77

develop soft skills communication, English speaking, group learning, team-based working etc. The goal of tertiary
education should be to provide opportunities for lifelong learning. Higher engineering education too needs to be reoriented
to promote innovation as well as to keep pace with changing market and technology trends.
The growth of the information technology industry depends not just on technical manpower and its productivity, but on
semi-skilled and non-technical staff to a great extent. The lack of adequate skills in formal and informal sectors is known to
directly impact potential of the knowledge and innovation economy [8]. The overall shortage of adequately skilled people in
labour markets, therefore, would hamper the growth in the IT sector as well. The dreams of Indian policy makers and
politicians to make India a knowledge economy piggybacking on the demographic dividend, therefore, appear divorced from
ground realities.
3. Innovation and products pie
In the past three decades, Indian IT industry has evolved a great deal. It has moved up the value-chain from being a
supplier of low-cost coders and programmers for onsite work (a phenomenon widely referred to as body shopping) to a
provider of comprehensive software development services to clients through offshore development centres. Indian
companies have also pioneered the model of global delivery for large customers and have entered the business of consulting
and IT infrastructure management, winning long term contracts. Top companies are offering engineering R&D and product
development services in sectors ranging from banking to medical implants. In outsourcing sector, high end services such as
patent services and bioinformatics are being offered under the umbrella of Knowledge process outsourcing. All these are
signs of maturing of the Indian software services industry.
However, a major weakness of the Indian industry is inadequate thrust on innovation, product development and focus on
R&D. One can safely say that most of the technologies deployed in Indian IT sector are either imported or their intellectual
property is in non-Indian hands. Though Indian companies engaged in engineering outsourcing are developing new
products, they are doing so for customers abroad. An array of multinational corporations deploy a large number of scientists
and engineers in dedicated R&D centres in India, but the products and patents generated do not benet Indians though they
do help in developing a local ecosystem for innovation and research. India ranked the lowest among the BRIC nations on the
Global Innovation Index 2012 which listed 141 countries on the basis of their innovation capabilities and results [9]. Brazil,
Russia and China were ranked 58th, 51st and 34th respectively, while India stood at the 64th position.
In the past few years, India has improved its performance in relation to indictors of capacity to innovate number of
scientists and engineers engaged in R&D, spending on R&D as percentage of GDP as well as innovation output in the form of
patents and research papers published in peer-reviewed journals. But it is still lagging because of certain factors. Domestic
R&D spending is still in the state sector. Private enterprises spend a little on R&D. The knowledge generation is mostly basic
research and not through commercial R&D. Even in offshored R&D where India had taken an initial lead, China is racing
ahead. In China, MNCs run about 1200 subsidiary centres carrying out R&D, compared to just 400 such centres in India [4]. In
overall R&D sector, China, Brazil and South Korea are growing much faster than India.

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Source for both the tables: India Science and Technology 201112, National Institute of Science, Technology and
Development Studies, New Delhi, India
Factors like dominant service orientation, lack of innovation nancing and underdeveloped domestic market are
responsible for the lack of focus on product development a parameter to measure innovation in Indian software industry.
Service companies often nd it challenging to understand target markets, conceptualizing a product and coming up with
something that is distinct from others. They are more tuned to project management and other organizational practices they
have been following for long. Startups are best suited for product development, for which they need venture capital. The
Indian software products industry in 2012 was estimated to be worth USD 2 billion. Till the enabling environment changes,
India would nd it difcult to make a mark in innovation-led knowledge creation.
In early 2013, about 30 product companies and individuals formed a new platform called the Indian Software Product
Industry Roundtable or iSPIRT to act as self-help community to promote an ecosystem for product companies. This was seen
as a break from the services-focus of existing trade bodies like the National Association of Software and Services Companies
(Nasscom). By stimulating a favourable policy and risk capital environment for product rms, the groups feels that Indian
products companies could make a mark by 2030 or so by developing products targeted at small and medium businesses [10].
In its assessment, cloud computing which helps build products with less capital than before and the trend of users buying
Software as service (SaaS) on the internet augur well for Indian product startups.
4. The promise of domestic market
One of the reasons for the lack of focus on software product development in India is the relatively small size of domestic
markets and inadequate diffusion of technology. Top product companies have succeeded because they had a large home
market for which they could develop products based on felt-needs, and then successful products could be taken to other
countries. The Indian IT software industry largely grew on exports, primarily of services. The situation changed in the late
1990s and the 2000s when local technology consumption and technology diffusion in the government and industry started
growing. India emerged as the fastest growing wireless market in the world and the use of IT in various service sectors grew
phenomenally. The use of IT products has been boosted with several large e-governance projects including the Unique
Identication (UID) under which identication numbers are to be assigned for each of the 1.2 billion residents of India for
efcient delivery of government services, and biometric data of the entire population captured and stored. Many ICT for
Development projects have been demonstrated on pilot scale, but they need to be scaled up. The domestic IT spending in
India is estimated to be less than 1% of the GDP, compared to the global average of 2.5%.
Market research rms predict a healthy growth for the domestic IT market, which was pegged at USD 30 billion in 2013.
Domestic IT spending in India is projected to rise to USD 36 billion in 2015 [11]. The potential for growth is huge as 20% of 50
million small and medium businesses in India are said to be technology-ready. This means the addressable market is 10
million users to begin with. In addition, the central and state governments have rolled out large programmes for citizen
access to government services as well as for networking of academic institutions and local bodies at the village level.

Source: Report of the Working Group on Information Technology for Twelfth Five Year Plan (20122017), Planning
Commission, Government of India.
Under the National Broadband Plan (NBP), 160 million households in country will get high-speed connectivity through
bre optics by 2014. Private telecom service providers too hope to unleash 4G services which could come bundled with a
tablet to access various services. High penetration of mobile telephony has introduced most Indians to digital technologies.
For most of them, the mobile phone display is the rst digital screen they own and use. The software industry will have to
cater to this new reality by developing new applications not just for entertainment but those related to education, health,
business and governance.
Despite likely higher penetration of digital technology in the form of mobile phones and other devices coupled with
service offerings, real access and use by the poor will remain an important issue tied with economic growth and literacy
levels.
5. Threat from disruptive technologies
Given the untapped potential of digital technology in India, the information industry is bound to grow domestically for
the next two decades. However, the projected growth in both domestic and export markets would not necessary come from
the conventional computing and web services model as we know today. Already the advent of smartphones and computing

D.C. Sharma / Futures 56 (2014) 7380

79

devices like tablets has changed this paradigm. A desktop computer or a laptop is not the only way to access the internet or
digital services nor is a web browser the only gateway to the digital world. Disruption that mobile technology has caused is
widespread touching sectors from entertainment and gaming to banking and governance.
The second change already being witnessed is the phenomenon of social networking like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and
so on, which are being used by people not only to communicate with friends and family members but to generate and share
news, pictures, videos etc. Companies are using social media to market products and services as well as closely interact with
customers. Cloud computing too is on the horizon although there is confusion about its real impact. It is a sort of on-demand
open market for computing resources using virtualization, collaboration and utility computing over multiple grids. It will
have direct impact on business of customized software development in short to medium term, though it is generating some
business in the interim as Indian IT-BPO companies are helping their customers in transitioning to cloud.
More profound changes in computer technology are in the ofng. In the past 50 years, the semiconductor chip-based
computer technology has progressed mostly as predicted by the Moores Law, according to which the number of transistors
within integrated circuits doubles about every two years while cost comes down. The trend has held for long and now the
speed of doubling transistor count is slowing down. It is projected that by the end of 2013 it would take three years for the
transistor count to double [12]. Gordon Moore himself had predicted end of his law some years ago saying that the transistor
size is already reaching the size of an atom which is the fundamental barrier.
In fact, the future may see not just death of the Moores Law but an end of computing itself as we know it today. The future
computing will be quantum computing and nanotechnology computing. Quantum computing has already made its advent
[13]. It is supposed to be much faster than traditional computing because of the unusual properties of particles at atomic and
molecular levels. Instead of the precision of ones and zeros used to represent data now, quantum computing relies on the fact
that subatomic particles inhabit a range of states. The technology is slowly moving towards wider acceptance and usage in
near future.
What might turn out to be truly disruptive in medium and long-term is nanotechnology computing. Nanotechnology can
be dened as the capability to manipulate, control, assemble, produce and manufacture components and systems with
atomic precision. This technology will morphose the very basis of todays information technology business Silicon. The use
of carbon nanotubes to make transistors would result in super fast and energy efcient computers. A carbon nanotube is a
molecule in form of a hollow cylinder with a diameter of around a nanometer (roughly 1/50,000 of the width of a human hair)
consisting of pure carbon. Scientists have developed some carbon nanotubes which are semiconducting and can be used as
transistors. As achieving the present levels of integration of silicon VLSI using carbon nanotechnology is a long way off,
Silicon Nanotech is becoming prominent. Nanocomputers will be embedded in nearly everything from textiles to mobility
devices.
Nano computing is not far away and some of its building blocks such as nano wire and IC connect are already appearing in
the market, according to experts [14]. Intel has developed a nano capacitor which it plans to introduce in some of their
products soon, while IBM has developed multipede drive based on nanotechnology. Toshiba too is working on a 40 nm nanomemory. Hardware companies will be the rst one to be hit as these new technologies begin to be incorporated into devices
over the next ve years.
Such fundamental changes in computing hardware would necessitate equally radical changes in software development in
the future. The Indian software export business, bulk of which is currently custom application software, will be hit hard if the
industry does not take any adaptive steps right away. The nanotech computing will impact different software layers a great
deal material and component layer to the maximum followed by hardware system layer, system software layer, interface
layer, middleware layer with application software layer the least. This could dramatically change the fortune of custom
application software development, if future nanotech favours component software concept in a big way.
The Indian industry as well as policy makers appear oblivious of this impending paradigm shift in computer hardware and
software. Though some Indian companies are making nano raw material and are also exporting, it is mostly for noncomputing applications of nanotechnology. The Department of Science and Technology has initiated a National Nano
Mission, which is a funding body with a rather diffused objective of capacity building which envisages the overall
development of this eld of research in the country and to tap some of its applied potential for nations development [15].
There is no mention of any programmes or projects aimed at protecting the future of USD 100 billion Indian IT business. On
the other hand, China has already attained a leading position in publications, standard development and is engaged in
sophisticated research in areas like nano-materials, applications and nano-safety. China is topmost source of scientic
publications in nanotechnology, accounting for 23% of the papers published in this eld globally, ahead of the US, Japan and
OECD. India accounted for 5% of all nanotechnology related papers in 2009 [16]. Between 2000 and 2009, China was granted
31 nanotechnology-related patents by the US Patent Ofce, while India just seven during the same period.
6. Conclusions
Over the past three decades, the Indian IT industry has matured and withstood many a downturns in export markets. In
the initial years, the body shopping model in which low cost engineers were sent to work onsite with clients overseas
was the norm. It helped the nascent industry overcome problems of such as lack of infrastructure and capital. As the industry
grew and gained condence of overseas customers, Indian rms pioneered the offshore delivery and development models,
under which they act as an extension of a clients technology function adopting the clients policies, standards and

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sometimes, even branding. This can be done from India, countries where clients are located or any low-cost location in a third
country. Delivery centres are also being set up closer to clients. Variations of this model have been replicated in other
countries and the number of such destinations will continue to grow. Some of them will emerge as competitors to India in
specic segments. For instance, though China entered the outsourced engineering and R&D services much later, it now
boasts of more foreign R&D centres than India. In the voice-based customer services, the Philippines, Romania, Poland and
Brazil are fast catching up. The message for the Indian industry for the future, therefore, would be to diversify into new type
of services, new geographies, new verticals and higher end of services.
Since the global sourcing market is poised to grow and has established itself as an irreversible trend in global economy
the overall size of the outsourcing pie too will grow in the next two decades. India will continue to be in forefront to grab a
chunk of this business in short to medium term. In its projections for 2020, industry body Nasscom has warned that 80 per
cent of incremental growth cannot be captured solely through the current offshore and low-cost proposition [17]. It sees
Indias market declining by 10% by 2020 and the country losing out to other aspiring nations. In such a scenario, export
revenues could reach USD 175 billion in 2020. Indian service providers, therefore, will have to consider distinctive
approaches, each building on one line of competitiveness with distinct performance markers and imperatives.
Early lead taken by China in disruptive technologies like nanotechnology as well as its leadership position in strategic
materials that go into making digital devices would place it in a position of advantage in the global digital technology
markets of the future.
India will nd it difcult to attain a leadership position in the global offshoring market due to erosion of advantages like
availability of low cost and English-speaking technical manpower pool under the business as usual scenario. India will have
to make huge investments in skill development and in improving quality and standard of education from primary to higher
levels, if it wants to reap benets of the so-called demographic dividend. Shortage of educated and skilled workers has been
predicted for many developed countries. However, mere availability of a large population of young people is not going to
automatically translate into an advantage for India.
If necessary initiatives are taken for talent and skill development, India can carve a niche in innovative technologies in
emerging areas like climate change adaptation and mitigation, energy efciency, drug development, healthcare services. It
could also become a hub of services of a different kind such as those targeting geriatric populations in the developed world
(given the fact it will have a relatively younger population while China and Western countries will be grappling with an
ageing population). The Indian industry could also take advantage of the domestic market, which is poised to grow, and
markets that will develop in countries currently categorized as the least developed. India has distinct advantages a large
potential workforce; it is a functioning democracy with a robust judiciary and free press; a large domestic market;
demonstrated brand in global technology space and well placed and networked Diaspora. All it needs to do is improve its
education system at all levels, make it industry-ready, develop an innovation infrastructure with all necessary linkages,
improve productivity of knowledge workers and nurture domestic information technology markets. All is not lost yet.
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