The second quarter of the financial year has thrown up few surprises for the IT industry even as the clouds of economic weakness darken the short term prospects of many of the country’s large firms in infrastructure, manufacturing and telecom. The lack of resolution to the Greek crisis and the continuing spectre of a collapse of the European Monetary Union with its inevitable ripple effect on global economies does not give much cause for cheer and the frozen spending and payment processes in many Government departments does not provide the domestic hedge that many firms have been banking on to keep revenues smooth.

In this difficult environment, the good sequential quarter and year on year growth reported by most IT Services firms is cause for cheer. Led by the trailblazing Cognizant, most of us see reasonable spending in most markets and industry segments and should be able to deliver the promised numbers for the financial year. Some of the weaker players who have been unable to diversify their sector and geography coverage are facing challenges and may find their business models under even more pressure as the expected two quarter lag in GDP slowing and IT spending causes some impact in the first half of the next fiscal year. For the emerging companies in the product and new technology space, the opportunity continues to be bright because of the multiple small but significant areas like Information Security, Healthcare provider solutions, Entertainment and Gaming and Learning solutions that are available for the creation and deployment of world class IP. As industry doyen Nandan Nilekani said in a recent TV show, there is no cause for alarm that great Indian products have not emerged on the world stage yet. The first phase of providing global bets-in-class services is now maturing, the second phase of applying these capabilities to real local problems in key verticals as well as nation building programs like UID is well underway and Indian innovation will now come to the fore and develop solutions for the local and global market.br />
This dream will not become a reality by itself. A recent chat on NASSCOM’s Emerge Out intranet portal showed the hunger that young product entrepreneurs have for global success and their desire that associations like NASSCOM should play as important a role in this new revolution as was done in bringing IT Services to its numero uno position. Today, as never before technology like Cloud Computing, Web 2.0 and Mobility are opening up discontinuities in solution offerings that can be filled by bold innovative ideas that can and must come from this community. As Nandan mentioned, the democratic credentials and demographic dividend are still in favour of India and even as the darkening clouds hover above us, there will be many silver linings that Indian entrepreneurs can find to ride their way to new horizons of success!br />
Dr Ganesh Natarajan is CEO of Zensar Technologies and Co-Chair of the National Knowledge Council of the CII.