“Technology empowers the less empowered.” —PM Narendra Modi
We live in a modern world where technology is crucial for humanity. We are so used to technology that we enjoy its sources in our day-to-day life. It is evident from the fact that we are dependent on computer for everything we do and it has made our lives easier and comfortable. This technology is the greatest boon to our society. One of the major industries in this regard is “Information Technology”. Information Technology has two major components—IT Services and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Information Technology has an important role in India and it has transformed India from a slow-moving bureaucratic economy to a land of innovative entrepreneurs. India is now one of the biggest IT capitals of the modern world and all the major players of the IT sector are present in the country. The IT sector has increased its contribution to the GDP of India from 1.2% in 1998 to 7.7% in 2017. According to NASSCOM, the
sector aggregated revenue of $160 billion in 2017 with export revenue standing at $99 billion and domestic revenue at $48 billion, growing by over 13%. Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has started a project called Digital India to help IT secure a robust position both inside and outside India.
The country’s IT service industry was born in Mumbai in 1967 with the establishment of Tata Group in partnership with Burroughs. The first software export zone SEEPZ—the precursor to the modern-day IT part—was established in Mumbai in 1973. More than 80% of country’s software exports were from SEEPZ in 1980.
The Indian economy underwent major economic reforms in 1991 leading to a new era of globalisation and international economic integration and annual economic growth of over 6% from 1993 to 2002. The economic reforms were driven in part by significant Internet users in our country. The administration under former Prime Minister the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee placed the development of Information Technology among its top five priorities and formed the Indian National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development.
The Indian IT market currently focuses on providing low-cost solution in the services sector of global IT. The presence of Indian companies in the product development business is very meagre, however, the number is slowly rising. US giants outsourcing work to India do not outsource the high end SDLC (Systems Development Life Cycle) process like requirement analysis, high-level design and architectural design, although some Indian IT players have enough competency to take up and be successful in the high level software jobs. The other prominent trend is that IT jobs which were once confined to Bengaluru are now expanding to cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. Research in the industry was earlier concentrated in Programming languages like Java, but in the recent times, the research focus has changed towards technologies like Mobile computing, Cloud computing and Software as a service. This shift is attributed to the preference of clients for ubiquitous computing over standalone computing. The IT sector has also led to massive employment generation in India.