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The President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has urged the NASSCOM to set its goal for capturing 15 per cent of the world’s Internet technology market by 2009. Dr. Kalam was interacting with CEOs and members of the NASSCOM, Executive Council in Mumbai through video conferencing from Rashtrapati Bhavan today during the Valedictory function of NASSCOM-2005. Dr. Kalam said, “small aim is a crime” and thus NASSCOM should raise its goals from 3.5 per cent to 15 per cent.
The President said that the mission for making India a developed country by the year 2020, is not only about getting added revenues from agriculture and industry but is also about increasing income through knowledge intensive products. The first aim should be to capture 15 per cent of the business in the global market in IT Service, IT Enabled Services (ITES) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), the market for which is US $ 1.2 trillion. The President asked the CEOs present to take this up as a challenge and was confident that it was achievable as risk takers always win. Dr. Kalam said he was even more confident of the achievability of this goal since the university system is contributing over two million graduates including Engineering graduates every year. This is a vital resource needed for growth in the IT Services, ITES and BPO. Now what is needed is infrastructure establishments such as IT parks including call centres in large numbers for providing the services which can be established by the country’s cash rich IT companies and the State Governments. “We should aim at increasing the knowledge pool to 5 million Indian youth by the year 2008, which will enhance the existing efficiency by the factor of two”, Dr. Kalam said.
The President felt that there was a need to attain self-reliance in the infrastructure software sector with knowledge products, where the domain applications could be developed and deployed for the services sector. “It is essential to channelise our resources from the industry, academic institutions and research organizations and setting up incubation centres in collaboration with each other in different parts of the country. These incubation centres will continuously feed technologies to industries. The student community is a big resource, the IT industries in their own interest; have to equip the educational institutions to harness the power of the student community”, he added.
Dr. Kalam said that to achieve competitiveness along with research results, an effective triangle of industries, researchers from academia, R&D and the student community should be created to develop innovative products. The President said that these tasks were important for the ICT community for wealth generation.
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