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Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has discussed opportunities for Indian IT companies to invest and grow their business in new markets like the Nordic countries, Eastern and Central Europe, Canada, Australia and Africa.
He has also called on them to explore avenues for greater investments and growth in East Asian markets like China, Japan and Korea.
The meeting with senior managers of IT companies was held in New Delhi on 31 July 2019.
India’s IT industry contributed 7.7% to the country’s GDP in FY 2017 and is expected to contribute 10% of India’s GDP by 2025. According to NASSCOM, the sector aggregated revenues of US$160 billion in 2017. The United States account for 2/3rds of India’s IT services exports.
India’s IT and ITeS industry grew to US$181 billion in 2018-19. Exports from the industry increased to US$137 billion in FY 2019 while domestic revenues (including hardware) advanced to US$44 billion.
The executives pointed out during the meeting that their businesses have not been able to grow in China due to various non-tariff barriers and challenges faced in setting up an entity.
The Chinese IT services market is the third largest in the world but Indian investments and market access face issues that create hurdles for Indian companies.
The top five Indian IT service companies like TCS, WIPRO, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and HCL are doing business in China for more than a decade and are employing 90% of local people in their operations there. But returns are very low and therefore Indian IT service companies are not showing much interest to invest and expand their operations in China, they said.
Responding, the Minister has requested National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and the senior managers of the companies attending the meeting to share specific data regarding non-tariff barriers being faced by them in China and other East Asian markets.
The Government will give all support for the global growth of India’s flagship industry and will make all efforts to facilitate the IT service industry, he assured.
The Government is ready to engage with China as well as Japan and South Korea on helping the industry market progress, Goyal added.
The Minister also urged the IT companies to explore other markets and not be inhibited in operating in countries that are non-English speaking.
He has urged the top five Indian IT firms to create a corpus that will be spent on training manpower in languages like Mandarin, Japanese and Korean for accessing those market.
The meeting was attended by senior managers of TCS, Satyam Venture engineering, HCL, NIIT Tech, Infosys, Invento Robotics, Tech Mahindra and WIPRO. Sangeeta Godbole, DG of Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) and President of NASSCOM, Debjani Ghosh, were also present during the discussions with Commerce and Industry Minister.
India is the largest exporter of IT services in the world. Export-oriented IT companies constitutes about 79% of the total revenue of the industry.
India’s IT service sector is now gearing up to be the digital partner of intelligent automation like smart algorithms, bots and AI tools, which are fast becoming a part of every industry and an increasingly digital world, said the Ministry in a release on 1 August 2019. fiinews.com
