The Hindu Business Line : `India lacks skill sets in products space'<br>Microsoft CTO says changes needed in engg curricula

THE Microsoft Senior Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, Mr Craig Mundie, has said India should expand its engineering curriculum to train people in the business of software to make progress in the products space.

"India has done a spectacular job in the software services space but is yet to see the emergence of software businesses that address specific market requirements in the country," Mr Mundie said on Friday.

The country produces a relatively small percentage of engineers in computer science and there is a need to balance the curriculum through expansion to support product-oriented activities, he said.

Software companies such as Infosys and Wipro have been training a number of graduates to meet their own requirements, which is not enough, he said. "It is here that academic institutions could do much more," said Mr Mundie.

Mr Mundie said academic institutions should strive to make it attractive for people to graduate to computer science. This will require shifting and balancing in curriculum at the undergraduate level, an area that will require very large investments, he said.

The Indian education system lacks the necessary skill-set for advanced computer science engineering, though it has built the necessary expertise in other engineering fields, Mr Mundie said adding that the country needs to take up certain policy initiatives to counter this lacuna. Currently, the country produces less than 50 PhDs in computer sciences, which Mr Mundie said was less than one large computer science department in the US.

On the shift in innovation from the US to countries such as India and China, Mr Mundie said global companies such as Microsoft, which does two-third of its business outside the US, are enjoying the benefit of innovation no matter it happens in whichever part of the world. "We are not concerned about innovation shifting from the US," Mr Mundie said adding, "I believe the US still has capabilities for innovation."

Innovation is likely to increase in emerging economies like India because the large number of engineers being educated creates a capacity to invent, Mr Mundie said. "But it is always a challenge to commercialise those inventions," he said.

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