Indian IT sector top revenue generator, job creator

Mumbai, July 28 The already buzzing Indian Information Technology (IT) sector got a shot in the arm when the industry body National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) predicted that the sector will grow twice as much the Indian gross domestic product (GDP) in the last financial year.

It is around $227 billion industry, which added 4.5 lakh new jobs to take the overall direct employees to 50 lakh people. Over 44 per cent of the new hires were women and their overall share is now 18 lakh.

The IT industry grew over 15 per cent in the last financial year 2021-22 (April-March).

The Central government's flagship Digital India mission has also given necessary impetus to the IT industry in the country.

According to India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), in 2021-22 financial year (FY22), the top three Indian IT companies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Infosys, were expected to offer 1.05 lakh job opportunities due to the increasing demand for talent.

The Indian mobile gaming market is growing at a pace in tandem with the global trend and is expected to reach $7 billion in 2025. The online gaming market in India is projected to reach $2.12 billion by 2023, from $1.08 billion in 2020, due to rapid increase in consumption.

India's IT and business services market is projected to reach $19.93 billion by 2025. According to Gartner estimates, IT spending in India was forecasted to be $81.89 billion in 2021 and further increase to $101.8 billion in 2022, a 24.31 per cent year-on-year increase.

The IT industry's revenue had grown by 2.3 per cent to $194 billion in FY21. Export revenues grew 17.2 per cent to $178 billion, while the domestic revenues grew 10 per cent to $49 billion. Additionally, share of the new age digital services grew 25 per cent to $13 billion and India has a strong workforce geared for technologies of the future, Nasscom had stated.

"This has been a watershed year for the tech industry, thanks to the persistent focus on customer-centricity. The industry has added $100 billion in 10 years; the first $100 billion took 30 years," said Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh.

IT, a knowledge-based industry, has the tremendous potential of becoming an engine of accelerated economic growth, productivity improvement for all sectors of the economy and means of efficient governance.

It enhances access to information, protects consumers, provides access to government services, makes skill formation and training more effective, improves delivery health services, and promotes transparency. It provides tremendous employment potential and linkages between government and the people both at the rural and urban level, stated NITI Aayog.

India's Minister of Communications, Electronics & IT Ashwini Vaishnaw, said the tech industry showed remarkable resilience despite the disruption caused by Covid. "This is one of the key differentiators from the country," he had stated.

Indian IT firms have delivery centres all across the world. The IT & BPM industry is well diversified across verticals such as BFSI, telecom and retail.

According to IBEF, in 2020-21, India ranked third worldwide with 608,000 cloud experts across all verticals, including technology.

The computer software and hardware sector in India attracted cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows worth $81.31 billion between April 2000 and December 2021.

The IT industry accounted for 8 per cent of India's GDP in 2020. According to Software Technology Park of India, software exports by the IT companies connected to it, stood at Rs 1.20 lakh crore in the first quarter of FY22.

Indian software product industry is expected to reach $100 billion by 2025. Indian companies are focusing to invest internationally to expand global footprint and enhance their global delivery centres, revealed IBEF.

The data annotation market in India stood at $250 million in FY20, of which the US market contributed 60 per cent to the overall value. The market is expected to reach $7 billion by 2030 due to accelerated domestic demand for Artificial Intelligence.

Exports from the Indian IT industry stood at $149 billion in FY21. Export of IT services has been the major contributor, accounting for more than 51 per cent of total IT export (including hardware). The Business Process Management (BPM) and Engineering and R&D (ER&D) and software products exports accounted for 20.78 per cent each of total IT exports during FY21. ER&D market is expected to grow to $42 billion by 2022.

The computer software and hardware sector in India attracted cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows worth $81.31 billion between April 2000-December 2021. The sector ranked second in FDI inflows as per the data released by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Computer software and hardware make up 14.19 per cent of the cumulative FDI inflows.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been giving lot of importance and support to the start-up companies in the country. Lots of IT start-up companies -- Internet of Things, machine learning, artificial intelligence and healthcare -- have started operation and are getting support from various government schemes.

India's IT startup ecosystem has received record investments of nearly $36 billion in privately held companies in 2021, up from $11 billion in 2020.

In the Union Budget 2022-23, the allocation for IT and telecom sector stood at Rs 88,567.57 crore.

The government introduced the STP Scheme, which is a 100 per cent export-oriented scheme for the development and export of computer software, including export of professional services using communication links or physical media.

According to Invest India, the country is one of the most preferred destinations when it comes to setting up Global Capability Centres (GCCs). In FY21, more than 1,400+ GCCs have more than 2,300 GCC units in India, employing more than 1.38 million professionals.

Investment in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has increased 62.5 per cent over 2021 and is expected to reach $6.5 billion in 2022. There are over 1,150 active Indian SaaS companies; 17 of which have achieved the unicorn status.

Keeping itself abreast with the latest technology innovations globally, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released the National Strategy on Blockchain to reduce frauds, speed up enforcement of contracts, and increase the transparency of transactions.

According to a NITI Aayog white paper, Artificial Intelligence and new-age technology will boost India's annual growth rate by 1.3 per cent by 2035.