India's President Kalam sets 15% target for IT global biz

India's President Kalam sets 15% target for IT global biz

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President Kalam sets 15% target for IT global biz

Thursday, 10 February , 2005, 16:58

Mumbai: President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam today called upon the domestic software industry to tareget atleast 15 per cent of the global business volume of Information Technology (IT) and IT-Enabled services and Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) at around US Dollars 200 billion by 2008.

Currently, the global business volume in these two sectors alone accounts for USD 850 Billion and is expected to be touch around 1.2 trillion dollars by 2008, Dr Kalam pointed in his video conference address at the valedictory function of the "NbuttCOM 2005: India Leadership Forum" here.

Dr Kalam also said that the software industry in India is nearly is nearly USD 28 billion(USD 18 Billion Export and USD 10 Billion Domestic Market) contributing to nearly 24 per cent of nation's exports accounting for around 3.5 per cent of the global market.

He chided the industry's target for 2008 at around 8-9 per cent is small saying: "Small is a crime".

"I consider this as doable, since our university system is contributing over two million graduates including Engineering graduates every year. This is a vital resource needed for growth in the IT Services, ITES and BPO. Now what is needed is the infrastructural establishment such as IT parks including call centres in large numbers for providing the services which can be established by our cash rich IT Companies and the state governments", he said.

The industry should aim at increasing the knowledge pool to five million Indian youth by the year 2008, which will enhance the existing efficiency by the factor of two, the President pointed out. Asking the Industry captains buttembled at Nbuttcom conference here to meet this challenge, the President said "How do we achieve this? This should be the collective concern of the entire software industry, NbuttCOM, user industry buttociations such as CII, FICCI, Government and Non-government organisations".

Congratulating the Indian IT industry reaching a milestone in January, 2005, of having more than one million software professionals employed by the industry in spite of worldwide reluctance on outsourcing, Kalam said,"this shows the unquestionable quality of the Indian software professionals and the fact that India is the best and the ultimate destination for all ICT related activities".

However for the country that wants to become the leader in the knowledge era, it is necessary to have revenue per capita almost increased by an order of magnitude.