India on the yellow brick road

BANGALORE: “Ground is being prepared for the Red Dragon breathing fire and

the Elephant dance,” stated Pradeep Gupta, managing director, IDC (India) Ltd.

and chairman, CyberMedia Group, referring to the rise of India-China combine as

a key economic power.

This set the agenda for the daylong IDC's

Directions Conference, held here today.

The event brought together leading IT think-tanks and market gurus, who set

the tone for ICT directions in 2007.

Commenting on the GDP growth and route taken by India to become world's

preferred 'IT destination', Gupta said, “India has chosen the Yellow Brick

Road,” drawing a parallel to the one chosen by Dorothy, a famous character in

'The Wizard of Oz.'

“The road ahead is hard but is peppered by a lot of opportunities along the

way,” he said. Gupta spoke of the challenges and the trends afoot for India in

the global IT and communications market for 2007.

On the domestic IT market, Kapil Dev Singh, country manager, IDC (India)

shared encouraging figures of the IT market. On the telecom front, wireless

will witness high growth even though the challenge faced by wireless service

providers will be falling ARPUs (average revenue per user), he noted.

Sharing IDC's prediction for 2006, Singh said, “We shall see a

bifurcation of investment between enterprises and customers rather than just

enterprise driven. By 2007 we shall see a deeper impact on renewed models of

delivery, engagement and users,” Singh said.

Taking the theme forward, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, director, School of

Convergence, CyberMedia,

touched upon the political, economic and business environment that affect India's

global positioning. Factors like monsoon, agricultural dependency, rising oil

prices, political uncertainty, and government policies, he said the growth in

India's GDP for 2007 will be slower at 7-7.5 per cent, marginally falling down

from current GDP of 8.4 per cent (March 2006).

“The agricultural sector in India has grown by only 1.5 per cent, while a

large portion (60 per cent) of Indian population depends on agriculture directly

and indirectly,” he said while relating to the close effect of agrarian

economy on overall Indian GDP.

“Owing to the massive power shortage and theft, we are losing around 10 per

cent of domestic GDP,” revealed Thakurta while commenting on the action needed

on power and infrastructure improvements. Emphasis was on taking the IT

revolution forward in India not at the cost of neglecting the rural needs.

The speakers threw open macro perspective on the movement of IT and

communications industry while tackling three growth drivers — infrastructure

management, mobility and convergence.

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