Even as India’s tech industry witnessed slower growth due to macro headwinds, the domestic IT growth, in 2023, for the first time, exceeded the export growth, said Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman & MD, Cognizant India, Chairperson, Nasscom.

The domestic growth was supported by government investments and embracement of emerging technologies, as the market grew 7.8 per cent in 2023. Nambiar was speaking at Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum 2024.

“The Indian economy grew two times faster than the global economy, and the investments we have made in physical and digital infrastructure and the demographics is actively shaping our businesses, and that’s a huge progress. This decade is actually ours,” he said.

Tech industry in India is now a $253 billion industry and employs over 5.4 million people. India is the third largest tech startup ecosystem and the third largest digitised country in the world. Given the global headwinds in 2023, the industry did witness a slower growth but still has added $9 billion in incremental revenue and 60,000 new jobs, Nambiar noted.

The chairman further underscored that the Engineering Research and Development (ER&D) industry alone contributed 48 per cent of the total export revenue addition in FY2024. Additionally, the Global Capability Centres(GCC) have been a bright spot this year as they have been expanding their portfolio in India. The industry added 53 new GCCs in 2023, and the total talent employed by the industry is 1.6 million people.

Nambiar also noted that the tech startup ecosystem this year has made good progress with over 950 tech startups being founded in 2023, contributing to a total of more than 31,000 tech startups in the last 10 years. The cumulative funding in the sector from 2019 to 2023, exceeded $70 billion. He also highlighted that Generative AI is the one trend that truly defines the year that went by, and AI is revolutionising the industry and enhancing our daily experience in many ways.

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