Balancing The Pie for a Tech Superpower

I

have a favorite PowerPoint slide: the "Total IT Industry" pie chart we

carry on the cover of the Dataquest Top 20 issue each year. It shows India’s

tech exports in blue, and the domestic IT industry in orange.

Each year, the orange slice gets smaller. From 87% in 1990, the domestic

revenues have dropped to 51% of the pie in 2000, 39% in 2002, and 33% in

2003-04. This tech superpower has a receding home market…

And that is scary. Though in absolute terms the market is growing (slowly),

the orange slice is shrinking. And with it is mindshare for India’s own tech

market. For media, government, public, "Indian IT" means software

exports and BPO. A tidal wave that’s meant global recognition for India, that’s

shaken stockmarkets, caught the imagination of school kids. But talk about the

Indian IT market slowing down, and I get blank stares.

The Dataquest Awards this year recognize three men who have broken new ground

in another direction. Each has strengthened India’s tech future in a different

way, away from that tidal wave.

Dr Vijay P Bhatkar, Dataquest’s Lifetime Achievement Awardee for 2003, had

his own unique solution when India was faced with a ban on buying US-made

supercomputers. Under him, C-DAC built its own supercomputer. In three years.

Taking India into an elite club that made countries sit up and notice that we

didn’t just have coders. Which also helped get the meaningless ban lifted.

Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala created a group at IIT Madras founded on the belief

that technology could help in sustainable rural development–with a viable

business proposition, not charity. Along the way, the group created and adapted

technologies, all the while keeping in view a tight focus on a low-cost,

workable business model. For this, he receives the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award.

And though Deepak Puri, the Dataquest IT Man of the Year 2003, lives largely

in the blue area of the pie, he has broken new ground there: he’s helped make

India a manufacturing country. His optical media company has shown that with

focus and zeal, it’s possible to be an Indian global top-three manufacturer.

That you don’t have to be in software in India to be a global player.

These are men who helped have balance the tech pie for software exporter

India.

When we now look at the shrinking orange slice, or about the thin slice that

manufacturing has in the pie, we can worry a little less. Bhatkar and

Jhunjhunwala and Puri have made a beginning. They’re tiny marks on the smaller

slices of this pie. But there’s a generation looking for inspiration, and they’ll

find it in these men.

Prasanto K Roy