BFSI tops IT spenders list

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Banking, Financial Services and Telecom remain on top in terms of large IT spenders, according to a study by Dataquest, CyberMedia’s flagship magazine and IDC India.

Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Canara Bank, City Union Bank, Corporation Bank, ICICI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Karnataka Bank, PNB, SBI, Syndicate Bank and United Bank of India, featured in the Top 50 Indian IT spenders list.

According to the Dataquest-IDC Survey among 211 large IT user companies in India revealed that they spent 27 per cent more on IT in 2007-08.

According to the survey these companies would invest 22 per cent more on IT during 2008-09.

Telecom and BFSI companies remained top IT spenders with average IT spend per company touching Rs 191.6 crore and Rs 87.5 crore respectively in 2007-08.

In the BFSI segment LIC, NSDL, National Insurance, New India Insurance and Oriental Insurance made large investments.

The new generation grocery stores from big corporate groups are banking on technology to compete in the low-margin, high-growth organized retail business, the report said. The IT investments in the retail sector grew at 43 per cent. The average IT spend for a retail player was Rs 7.4 crore.

The top spenders on IT from the telecom sector included Bharti, BSNL, Hutch, MTNL, Reliance Telecom and VSNL.

The IT and BPO companies form the next lot of big IT spenders and include Aricent, iGate, Infosys, ITC Infotech, Mastek, Mphasis, Sasken Communications, Wipro and Zensar.

The lower growth in IT investments is expected across all sectors in 2008-09 except the pharmaceuticals and biotech sector that is expected to invest about a one-fifth more than their IT investments in 2007-08.

Hardware that accounted for 43 per cent of the IT budget of these companies in 2007-08, will account for only 41.6 per cent in 2008-09. The share of hardware will be picked up by services, which will account for 26.5 per cent in 2008-09, as compared to 24.9 per cent in 2007-08. The share of package software in the overall IT budget will hover around the same level of 26 per cent.

The large spenders from among the oil and petroleum sector included Bharat Petroleum, GAIL, Hindustan Petroleum, Indian Oil and ONGC. The automobiles sector threw up Ashok Leyland, Maruti and Tata Motors in the list of 50 large IT spenders.