The Hindu Business Line : Innovate to grow faster: Ramadorai

INNOVATE AND GROW: The Maharashtra Chief Minister, Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, with the Nasscom Chairman, Mr S. Ramadorai, and the Vice-Chairman, Mr B. Ramalinga Raju, at the Nasscom India Leadership Forum in Mumbai on Wednesday. - Paul Noronha

Mumbai , Feb. 15

WHILE India can grow its offshore IT and BPO industry by 25 per cent annually to reach revenues of $60 billion by 2010, another $15 billion to $20 billion can be added through deep innovation, driven by industry participation.

The new mantra for growth has to be innovation and India must have a master plan for R&D, said Mr S. Ramadorai, Chairman, Nasscom, and CEO and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services, at the inaugural session of Nasscom 2006 in the city.

While Indian universities throw up only 12,000 PhDs all disciplines included, the US generated 40,000 PhDs annually, he said.

India must be in the forefront of innovation and be able to create a killer application that is simple and can be accessed in myriad languages, he said. Industry, universities and governments will have to share and collaborate to bring about this, he said.

The other point is that domestic industry, such as the banking and financial services sector, offers a vast testing ground for the development of technology, on account of the sheer scale, size, spread and lack of infrastructure. "If anything can succeed here, it will succeed anywhere in the world," he said. The tables have turned and the experiments and critical trials conducted here will be exported globally.

Pitching for Maharashtra

Making a pitch for Maharashtra, the Chief Minister, Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, said that besides Mumbai and Pune, which were already success stories, the government was developing Nagpur, Aurangabad and Nasik as IT-ITES hubs. The airports in a couple of these cities are being declared international ones, he said.

Satyam Computers has already signed an MoU with the Government for a unit in Nagpur; and Microsoft has shown keen interest in various parts of the State, he said. On the power crisis in the State, Mr Deshmukh said it was a temporary phase, and the problem was being personally addressed by him. There would be a reversal next year and in five years the State would again become a power-surplus State. Currently, the Government was seeking allocation of power from the Central grid, he said.

The State generates 1,69,000 trained IT personnel every year from its technical colleges. The Maharashtra State Knowledge Corporation has instituted an IT certification programme targeted at over one million students and 50,000 trained teachers in government schools.

The State Government has an IT policy (2003) in place, he said.

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