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'India has $47 billion outsourcing opportunity'

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Preeti
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As the country is poised to embark on a data-driven journey with ambitious national broadband connectivity for e-Services couple with ambitious UID project, the office automation and imaging industry sees it as a massive opportunity. In a national seminar on ‘Office Automation and Imaging Industry: Enabling the Next Big Leap' organized by CII, the stakeholders stressed upon the need of wider government-industry consultation.

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CII OA&I Division chairman and SVP at Canon India Alok Bharadwaj said that the automation and imaging is $2.25 billion industry today which is changing rapidly. "It is growing at 10 per cent per annum, and is diversified with SMBs and large enterprises. Rupee depreciation impacted it," he said.

The factors that are expanding the industry, Bharadwaj feels, are: communications drift towards electronic mode; government-driven digitalization; and services proposition. With a host of services and applications, education, BFSI, telecom, retail and construction are, however emerging as potential business sectors.

New regulations such as on e-Waste, energy efficiency and standardization, Bharadwaj believes need deeper consultation with the industry. CII also bats for enhancing technology adoption for better governance, transparency and empowerment.

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JK Dadoo, joint secretary at the Ministry of Commerce said that even after years of outsourcing and rising competition, India continues to reign as the most preferred outsourcing destination. Currently, he said, six Indian cities are among the world's top eight global locations in IT/ITes outsourcing.

There is US $47 billion business outsourcing opportunity exists in India, believes Dadoo. This, he said, despite enacting privacy laws in the US and Europe that impacts companies which outsource work to India.

Former DG at NIC N Vijayaditya said that government has embarked on computerization journey. Integration of services and information retrieval, he feels is important. "80 per cent of the IT, today constitute electronic transaction while people are reluctant to use digital signature," Vijayaditya said. Electronic record keeping, he feels, is a challenge today.

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