REWRITING THE SCRIPT OF A NATION

There are occasions in history when an idea becomes an industry. Ever since the Great Industrial Revolution took place in England, more than 350 years back, innovations have turned reality and become profitable ventures. The second Industrial revolution created the most fundamental technologies that translate into products that we enjoy today, from the cars we drive to the clothes we wear to the lights that we switch on and the houses we build and live in.

With its large population and market-friendly policies, India has been a beneficiary of products created outside its borders. What India offers to the world is however the spirit of service and labor intensive activities. To Western markets India is a picture of hard working citizens toiling away in a rural setting or more recently behind rows of neatly arranged desktops. The Indian software services industry, as an example, contributes about 14% to exports and employs nearly 3 million people. In a span of a decade this industry has grown significantly and will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.

But just like the Industrial Revolution gathered momentum in a context of availability of raw material, labor resources and economic stimulus, over the last few years there has been a slow but steady convergence of several factors which is leading to a silent revolution in India in the software products space. Principally, these factors include the ubiquitous availability of mobile phones, ease of adoption of SaaS, and the increased collaboration fostered by social networks.

India has the potential to spawn companies that serve millions of customers with a path breaking affordable product. With many new Indian technology businesses being created every month, the next 20 years could belong to these Indian product companies.

SOFTWARE PRODUCTS WILL TRANSFORM INDIA AT LARGE

We believe that the new generation of Indian software products will have a big impact on improving government, labor, and social productivity. It will make governance more data-driven, small businesses exponentially more productive, and communities more connected.

In India the majority of economic activity takes place in the informal sector. For the first time ever, self-employed individuals are able to use technology to become efficient and competitive. For instance, a self-employed driver can now be part of a taxi network and have access to new customers. Or a small bus operator can use RedBus and have a state of art seat management system. In fact, now any small businesses can embrace a game changing business application easily. This is creating unprecedented opportunities for individuals and smaller firms to create value in their business. As this revolution unfolds, it has the potential to make the Informal Sector the new engine of economic growth.

Large businesses everywhere are in the midst of massive change where competitive intensity is increasing, where barriers to entry are reducing sharply, and where margins are hard to sustain. There are many ways to characterize the shifts taking place. Hierarchies to networks.Stocks to flows. Centralized to distributed. Broadcast to peer-driven. One-way to two-way. Command and control to community.To cope with all this, a new generation of IT infrastructure and applications is getting deployed. Indian software products are making their mark in this space and several startups have become leading players on a global basis in their specific categories.