Indian IT crosses $50 billion: Dataquest

NEW DELHI: The sunrise Indian IT industry recorded a growth of 32 per cent in rupee terms, in fiscal 2006-`07, to cross the $50 billion mark, according to a survey by Dataquest magazine. The industry growth in dollar terms was at 30 per cent.

Export earnings of Rs 153,744 crore and a domestic market of Rs 73,135 crore contributed the revenue of Rs 226,879 crore. Exports revenues grew at 35 per cent and the domestic market at a consistent 27.2 per cent, roughly the same for three years now,

Dataquest’s 20th DQ Top 20” annual survey of the Indian IT industry.

The IT services exports crossed trillion rupees mark to reach Rs103,647 crore, representing a growth of 37 per cent. BPO Services grew 33.5 per cent to touch Rs. 37,800 crore.

Engineering services (Rs. 4,146 crore) and entertainment and gaming (Rs. 1810 crore) too emerged as strong exports areas.

Talking about the Indian IT industry crossing $50 billion mark, Pradeep Gupta,

publisher of Dataquest , said, "After a consistent 30 per cent-plus growth for over three

years, this achievement marks a truly a proud moment for Indian IT's entrepreneurs, as well as the 1.6 million technology professionals who contributed directly to it."

The Top 20 players accounted for as much as 77 per cent of the software services exports by growing at 44.2 per cent, the highest in the first seven years of the millennium.

The top three players Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro got into the big league by bagging several large deals and growing their consultancy business in the face of competition from the established players from North America and of late, Europe.

British Telecom awarded a billion dollar contract to Tech Mahindra, a company that recorded a growth of 134 per cent to jump into the Top 10 list.

The next 20 players comprised companies like Hexaware, L&T Infotech and NIIT Technologies contributed to nearly 11.4 per cent of the total revenues. Several hundred smaller players contributed the remaining 12 per cent.

Top eight software firms, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra and Patni, earned nearly 63 per cent of their export earnings from North America, 29 per cent from Europe and five per cent from the Asia Pacific region.

The Dataquest study noted that Application Development and Maintenance still contributed to nearly two-thirds of the total software export revenues, despite efforts to bring this down. Infrastructure services and Engineering Services contributed to five per cent and four per cent of the revenues.