TeX in India

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Ajit Ranade
TUG 2002, Thiruvananthapuram

TUG2002 September 2002

 A
Geographic
Idea of
India

TUG2002 September 2002

 An Economic Idea of India
Strengths
 sustained growth at 6.4 for over a
decade (but recent slowdown)
 strong export potential, current a/c
deficit low
 healthy forex reserves
 low external debt
 low inflation regime
 political consensus on reforms
 deepening financial sector
 knowledge base advantage,
demographic surge
TUG2002
Weaknesses
 fiscal deficit high, debt gdp ratio high
 fiscal situation of states worse
 inadequate infrastructure, huge funding
need
 unsatisfactory investment climate
 rising gap between rich and poor states
 dependence on oil imports, monsoons
 slowing of reforms, coalition compulsions
 social indicators below world average
September 2002
PPP GDP about US $2 trillion, fourth highest in the world

9 GDP Growth Trend

8
7
6

GDPGrowth (%)
5
4 India
3 World
2
1
0
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

TUG2002 September 2002

 High Service Sector Growth

24.8

1990-91
Agriculture
30.9
53.3 21.9

2000-01

Services Industry
43.7 25.4

TUG2002 September 2002

 Indian Software Industry

accounts for about 2% of India’s GDP.

In FY01, its share was 1.5% of the global market
($387 bn).
In FY02, the size of the industry was Rs. 485 bn of
which exports accounted for 76% and domestic
software 24%.
India exports software to 102 countries.
An unexpected bonus of highly subsidised tech
education?

TUG2002 September 2002

 Size of Indian Software Industry (in Rs.bn)
500
450
400
350
300 Exports Domestic
250
200
150
100
50
0

FY02 (E)
FY95

FY96

FY97

FY98

FY99

FY00

FY01
FY02 (in Rs. Bn): FY02 Growth Rate:
Exports 369 Exports 30%
Dom. Market 116 Dom. Market 18%
TUG2002 September 2002
 IT Enabled Services
•Recently emerged as a major driver of software
industry
•Covers services like medical transcription,
customer interaction service, data digitization,
back office operations
•In FY02, showed 70% growth (Rs. 70 bn)
•Employs over 1,00,000 people
•Will account for 40% of all venture capital
investment by end of 2002
TUG2002 September 2002
 NASSCOM McKinsey Report 2002

Domestic Market
13-15
Product and Technology
Services 8-11

ITES Exports 21-24

IT Services Exports 28-30

0 10 20 30 40

NASSCOM Estimates for 2008 (in $ Bn)

TUG2002 September 2002

 TeX in India
• TeX Users’ Groups of India is 5 years old
• Possibly the biggest TUG (?)
• All 13 Indic scripts can be typeset in TeX (but only 10 of
5000 fonts free)
• an estimated 8000 people work diectly on TeX for their
livelihood
• Research and font development work almost totally done
outside India in the past
• only one widely used TeX package done in India (pdfscreen)

TUG2002 September 2002

 TeX and Scientific Publishing

• Market concentrated, estimated value US $15bn

• Elsevier share about 40%
• total exports from Indian vendors for publishing
as a whole is US$ 100m, doubled in 3 years
• Scientific publishing much smaller part
• Training is a main bottleneck
• TeX may be loosing to newer technologies

TUG2002 September 2002

 Some TeX India case studies
• Universities, research institutes
• Medialab Asia, Homi Bhabha Centre
• Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
• TechBooks
• M.G. Antarrashtrira Hindi Vishwavidyalaya
• Focal Image India
• MacMillan, Thompson Press

TUG2002 September 2002

 Indian Readership

TUG2002 September 2002

 Readership Surveys
• Sources NRS and IRS
• growth more than 10%, high in the Hindi belt
• 180 m readers, Kerala 70%, Bihar 15%
• average exposure only 16 minutes to media
• Dainik Bhasker, Jagran now largest dailies
• readership of dailies growth faster than literacy
growth during 1999-2002
• 48% readership in 6 lakh villages

TUG2002 September 2002

 Outlook for Readership
•major book producing country
•greatest English language book buying potential in
the world
•growing literacy, edu institutions, and purchasing
power
•248 m adults are literate but do not read any
publication.
•FY03 may see a 20-25% sales growth in
publishing

TUG2002 September 2002

 TeX in India: Looking Ahead
• Increasing marketshare in publishing, higher billing
rates and volumes
• Catering to domestic publishing demand
• technical documents in Indian languages
• standardised encoding for all Indic scripts
• Prof. Vidysagars’s vision - right-click on a ps file to
transliterate in any Indian font
• Open Type fonts for all Indic scripts
• TeX development from India

TUG2002 September 2002

 TeX in India: Looking Ahead (contd)
• Marriage of Unix/Linux localisation with TeX,
also merge into Indic-computing effort
• same language subtitling
• e-books, simputer, text-to-speech
• training and outreach (the travelling TUG
secretariat, summer schools)
• leveraging open-source (a la sunshine and solar
devices)

TUG2002 September 2002