MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 20: Venture capital investments in the Indian IT and software services sector is expected to grow to $ 10 billion in 2008 from $ 320 million in 1999, Infosys Technologies managing director Nandan M Nilenkani said on Sunday. Venture capital activity has increased ten-fold since 1994.Delivering the Madhu Valluri Memorial Lecture on "IT Performance and Prospects" he said the Indian IT work force was the largest in the world after the United States at 2,80,000 people. The country was also leading in adoption of global standards, accounting for over 50 per cent of the 20 SEI-CMM Level 5 companies worldwide - even higher than the US. SEI-CMM Level 5 is the highest level of quality certification.Software exports constitute 10 per cent of exports from the country and is projected to touch $ 3.9 billion in 1999-2000, he said quoting from the Nasscom-McKinsey report. The software industry had consistently shown a compounded annual growth rate of over 50 per cent since 1991, while exports were growing at the rate of 5-6 per cent.Market capitalisation of software companies listed in India was $ 80 billion as on February 16, 2000, constituting 32 per cent of the total market capitalisation, as opposed to zero per cent seven years back, Nilenkani said. While the Nasscom report has projected it would reach $ 225 billion by 2008 when the industry notched $ 90 billion revenues, Nilenkani said there was a possibility it could be achieved sooner.Around 25 per cent of global IT services are expected to be outsourced by 2002, of which 6 to 5 per cent is likely to come to India. He said the biggest driver of IT spending in the future would be internet technologies of which 11 per cent would be outsourced. "In future, software will be delivered through the internet," he added. By 2006, the number of mobile phones would exceed the number of fixed line telephones and wireless internet access would become more popular.India was in a better position to tap this market because of the advantage of people and quality, Nilenkani said. The country was rated the highest both in vendor sophistication and people sophistication as opposed to China which had lower rating and Philippines which had a high vendor sophistication but low people sophistication, he said quoting from a recent survey.Others who spoke at the presentation of the first Madhu Valluri Memorial IT Journalist award and Vijeta award were Harish Mehta of Onward Technologies, D B Phatak of the Kanwal Rekhi School of IT, columnists Sucheta Dalal and Shoba De, and former State Bank of India chairman P G Kakodkar. The awards have been instituted in memory of Madhu Valluri who started The Software Review, India's first software magazine. P K Roy, editor of Dataquest, was given the IT journalist award and Vandana Gupta of V-Care, the award for a cancer survivor. The panel of judges comprised Nasscom president Dewang Mehta, Sucheta Dalal and D B Phatak.
