Address at the STPI Software Exports Awards

Graduating IT to Knowledge Products

I am indeed delighted to participate in the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Software Exports awards function. I greet all the IT industries who are receiving the awards today for their significant contribution in bringing the country's software industry to the global arena. I also wish those who did not get the award this year, that the country is grateful to them for what they are doing and sooner or later, they will also receive this award- because I have the confidence that you are the best in IT in the world. This function, I am sure will generate lot of interest which will further enhance exports by the IT industry. The exponential growth in IT business is directly related to how much innovation and research results we continuously inject to invigorate the industry.

Export Challenges and STPI

We have seen that growth of IT and telecommunication in India has established that the data transformed into information has a business proposition with a competitive advantage. I am sure by the end of this decade, entire India will have IT enabled services in the fields of customer interaction, finance and accounting, data search and integration, tele-education, tele-medicine and e-governance. Our core competencies that can be deployed in addition to what has been planned in 1998 include Information Security, Scientific Software Development, e-Governance, Tele-education, hardware and chip design and wireless. If we work and promote these areas with our core competencies, many Indian IT companies will soon become MNCs. Indian IT industries when they are working with various countries in business mode and partnership mode, recently some hesitations have been seen in a few instances in utilizing Indian know how. Whereas we see in our country we allow large number of business corporates to start IT product industries without any hesitation whatsoever and we treat the IT professionals from other countries with utmost respect. I can see a need for a policy discussion for ensuring that the relationship between MNCs/Industries of other countries and our Indian IT industries is built on a framework of mutual trust and respect in a two way street.

Convergence of Technologies

The technologies are converging together to provide a quality of service (QOS) with the reduced infrastructural setup. The information technology and communication technology have already converged leading to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Now, nano-technology is knocking at our doors. It is the field of the future that will replace micro electronics and many fields with tremendous application potential in the areas of medicine, electronics and material science. When nano technology and ICT meet, an integrated silicon electronics, photonics is born and it can be said that material convergence may happen. With material convergence and biotechnology linked, a new science called Intelligent Bioscience will be born which leads to a disease free, happy and more intelligent human habitat with longevity and super human capabilities.

Achieving global Competitiveness

We should realize a situation, our industry employing 500,000 people earning $10 billion which is less than one percent of the world market, from another perspective. At the same time a typical international software company with 50,000 employees earns $ 20 billion through its world wide operations. I suggest that the Governments, Industry and the academia can take this issue of increasing the domestic IT segment through strong and sustainable use of IT for education, health care and e-Governance by bringing out a roadmap. Based on the current trend, if we have to reach $ 80 Billion we will have to multiply our workforce 8 times which may not make our operations competitive. Hence our software industry has to move up the value chain and come up with innovative products that will have a commercial impact in the international market. I am confident that the Indian IT Industry would soon come up with such mega initiatives.

Knowledge Products

We need to attain self reliance in the infrastructural software sector with the knowledge products, where the domain applications can be developed and deployed for the services sector. It is essential to channelize our resources from the industry, academic institutions and research organizations and setting up the incubation centers in collaboration with each other in the different parts of the country. These incubation centers will continuously feed the technologies to the industries. The student community is a big resource, the IT industries in their own interest; have to equip the educational institutions to harness the power of the student community. For effective competitiveness with the research results, innovation as said, an effective triangle of industries, researchers from academia/R&D and the student community, it is possible to develop innovative products in the domains of General Purpose Operating Systems, Real Time Operating Systems through open source initiative, Embedded Operating Systems to run the real time and mission critical applications for the defence, space and aerospace applications, VLSI design, smart card sector with a multiple authentication technology built-in card with embedded encryption technology for the National ID Card Initiative, Application Servers framework for middle tier business applications, Relational and Object oriented Database management systems domain, Indian Traditional Digital Security Algorithms through our languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil and others which have unique encryption capabilities.

Value addition through Bioinformatics

The convergence of bioscience and IT into Bioinformatics has given the thrust to researchers for genomics-based drug discovery and development. Pressure is mounting over the pharmaceutical companies to reduce or at least control costs, and have a growing need for new informatics tools to help manage the influx of data from genomics, and turn that data into tomorrow's drugs. Indian IT industry has a tremendous opportunity in the drug development.

e-Waste

When IT industry grows into 10 times more IT business, a new situation will emerge what is called e-Waste, such as old hardware in the form of discarded electronic devices, computers, monitors, televisions and other electronic boards etc, which are today non degradable. Hence there is business proposition of research, development and production of technology for building a biodegradable electronic materials and possibly wearable computer products.

Single window Smart media Convergent System (SMCS)

In India, unlike in many developed countries, the Internet penetration is much lower than the PC penetration, PC penetration is much lower than the Cell Phone penetration, Cell Phone penetration is much lower than Land Line Telephone penetration and the Telephone penetration is much lower than the TV penetration. Though the cost of TV and the PC are comparable, one prefers to invest on TV than the PC since people finds much larger utility for the TV for entertainment. Imagine the amount of information a villager gets for about Rs 200 a month- nearly 70 channels, more than 6 MHz per channel - nearly like a PC with lesser bandwidth in single direction. Hence, the liking for TV is all pervasive.

I am visualizing a smart media which becomes a single window, a single device that combines the functionality of TV, VCR, PC, Internet and Telephone, all at the cost of a TV for our people to avail business opportunities, benefits of e-governance and e-commerce, quality tele-education and tele-doctor with voice communication at the home inclusive of entertainment. The Indian IT industries to be competitive, a joint research programmes have to get initiated to develop a Smart Media Convergent System (SMCS) and to build a related business capabilities.

Conclusion

Information Technology and knowledge workers have got a tremendous responsibility to contribute in the areas of infrastructural software's, real-time software's, smart card and multiple authentication technologies, and the application domains such as tele-medicine, bioinformatics, multimedia convergence technologies, tele-education and e-governance for rural areas apart from their business role. When we develop knowledge products for the infrastructural domain, it gives a large business perspective and helps us to compete in the international market as well as to self sustain and self support IT growth.

I wish all of you to endeavor to double our IT exports every two years till we become a developed nation.

Thank you.