IT sector can double revenues in 5 years: HCL Tech CEO

Despite the global economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, the Indian IT industry is hoping to double its revenues in the next 4-5 years.

The industry, which recorded revenues of $194 billion in 2020-21, says there is a potential of another $200 billion in the next 4-5 years as companies globally continue to invest on technology, while they are forced to cut spending in other areas.

“Projections suggest that there will be an incremental spending on IT of about $1 trillion. Even if we get 20 per cent of that we will be getting a business of $200 billion. This has potential to double our revenues in the next 4-5 years,” C Vijayakumar, Chief Executive Officer of HCL Tech, said.

Addressing the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum – 2021 panel on ‘Killing the myopia – Services redefined’ on Thursday, he said there was huge opportunity in developing platforms and products.

“In order to achieve scale, achieve standardisation and bring in more customers, you need to have platforms. The products business too has a lot of potential,” he said.

Thierry Delaporte, Chief Executive Officer of Wipro, said organisations had been cutting spending on other aspects of their businesses but not on IT. “A large European firm told us that they had to reduce spending because of the pandemic but not on technolgy,” he said.

He echoed the view that industry revenues would double in the next few years.

‘Agility is important’

He felt that while it is important to scale up the size of operations of an organisation, organisations should not lose agility.

He said it is important for companies to skill and reskill its employees in order to tap the potential.

Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Infosys, said business models were evolving, driven by technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and concepts like low-code-no-code.

Impact on hiring

Thierry Delaporte felt that there won’t be much impact on the hiring numbers as new technologies would require people to acquire new skills. He said that (job) roles were changing and there was a change in the way they were delivering services.

“There will be more new jobs than the jobs that were reduced because of automation,” he said.

Vijaykumar said that consolidation was largely driven by private equity. “Agility is more important,” he said. On how global the Indian IT industry was, he said about 85 per cent of IT spending was by 15 countries. “Though we have a presence in 80 countries, our prominence is in about 5 countries,” he said.