Industry body Nasscom has announced a new restructuring plan to grow its membership base.
This, according to industry watchers, is due to rising concerns over a section of its members being unhappy over their lack of representation by India’s technology lobbying group.
This restructuring will be around specific business verticals and build better outreach programmes that would focus on IT policies, global trade and other areas for the benefit of the Indian IT sector.
More members
Further, Nasscom plans to add another 3,000 members to its existing base that will build the $300-billion IT industry by 2020.
Currently, around 1,300 Indian technology companies are registered with Nasscom, out of which only 400 members are ‘active’, according to Nasscom officials.
“Nasscom has to add value by strengthening its existing areas and looking at new ones,” said Infosys co-founder & Chairman Emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy, who headed the committee and submitted his recommendations to make industry relevant.
This relevancy aspect is increasingly coming into question as some 30 Nasscom members who are in the software products segment, in February decided to be a part of iSpirt, a think tank that will address their issues. However, both Nasscom and iSpirt say that they will work with each other.
As a part of the value addition that Nasscom plans to give its members is a more structured approach.
Separate head
The verticals will be divided into IT services, business process outsourcing, captive IT arms of multinationals, engineering research and development, software products, domestic market and Internet/mobile.
All these will have a separate head who will take up their cause. Further, Nasscom plans to offer industry certification for 1 lakh employees by 2018.
The committee has roped in Rajan Anandan, head of Google India, to oversee Internet companies; Dell India President Ganesh Lakshimarayanan for products, software development related to multinationals; and Pramod Bhasin, former CEO of Genpact, and Ashank Desai, founder of Mastek, will oversee BPO.
When asked about the impact that this committee would have on the existing and prospective members, a CEO of an Internet start-up said that the certification aspect needs to be thought through so that favouritism of certain courses over others do not happen.
venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in