describe the growth of information technology industry
Answers
Answer: Two main components of Information Technology (IT) are software and hardware. The software has emerged as the major industry in the field of electronics. This industry made a modest beginning in the 1970s and by mid-1980s, the forecasters, analysts and policy planners started understanding the potential of computer software application.
The industry achieved a major breakthrough in the 1990s and is now one of the important industries of India. The main cause of the rapid development of software industry is its vast reservoir of technically skilled manpower which has transformed India into a software super power.
With a compound annual growth of about 52 per cent between 1991 and 1996, the Indian software sector has expanded almost twice as fast as the world’s leading US software industry did, during the same periods, although from a smaller base.
There is now a critical mass of more than 500 software firms in the country and apart from these companies there are an additional 1,000 start-up-companies. Today, India is one country that offers cost-effectiveness, great quality, high reliability, speedy deliveries and, above all, the use of state-of-the-art technologies in software industry. The year 1995-96 was a boom year for the Indian computer industry and the Information Technology (IT) industry of India really exploded in that year.
Despite the challenges such as the continued technology slowdown in the global market, strong fundamentals and core value position of the software and services industry led to outperforming all other sectors in the country. Its export grew by 26.3 per cent in 2002-03, clocking revenues of Rs 46,100 crore.
The Indian software and services industry is one of the very few sectors worldwide to have witnessed double digit growth (Fig. 27.11). This has increased its share of total Indian exports from 4.9 per cent in 1997 to 20.4 per cent in 2002-03. It is expected to generate total employment for four million people (including support services), account for 7 per cent of India’s GDP and 30 per cent of India’s foreign exchange inflows in the year 2008.