The document critiques the Indian IT industry, highlighting its reliance on low-cost manpower rather than innovation or substantial product development, resulting in only 2.35% of global IT spending. It discusses the industry's historical context, employment statistics, and the challenges of education and talent employability, leading to a conclusion that the industry is still underdeveloped. The author emphasizes the need for a shift towards innovation and improved intellectual property within the sector.

1. What’s Wrong with Indian IT
Industry?
Rajesh Varma
Feb 5, 2013

2. Who am I?
• Rajesh Varma
– Director of Product Engineering
– Pramata Knowledge Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
– Bangalore, INDIA.
• B.E. (Comp. Sci. & Engg.),
– 1993, MSRIT, Bangalore University
• Working since 1994. That’s 19 years.
Gives me enough dough to talk about.
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 2

3. Indian IT History…
• 1950 onwards – Government controlled
License Raj thriving.
• 1968 – Tatas get into software business.
TCS started.
• Mid 1970s – High import duties of 150%
forces companies like Wipro to
manufacture homegrown PCs.
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 3

4. Indian IT History…
• 1986 – General Electric expands in India
– Six Sigma becomes popular way to measure
manufacturing efficiency
– Wipro does lots of business with GE
• 1991 – Economic Reforms started
• 1995 – IT companies get into Y2K related
services
– Porting and code cleanup business
– Dependant on skilled manpower (programming)
– IT Business based on cost arbitrage (bodyshopping)
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 4

5. Indian IT History
• 2000 – Dot-com bubble bursts in US
– Downsizing, layoffs, bankruptcies order of the day
– Outsourcing to India accelerates
– Indian companies expand to absorb inflow of low-end
projects (services, maintenance, support, etc.)
• 2003 – India known as low-cost destination for
low-end IT work
– Lots of forex money
– Lots of jobs for one and all
– It’s great time!
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 5

6. Money Matters
• Worldwide IT Spending
(from Gartner)
– Y2013 – $ 3.7 trillion
– Surpass $ 4 trillion by
Y2015
• Indian IT exports
– $ 87 billion in Y2013-14
– Expected revenue as per NASSCOM
• Compare: $ 3.7 trillion
and $ 87 billion!
– Just 2.35 % of the pie
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 6

7. Are we world leaders in Information Technology?
It’s time to wake up from the dream!
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 7

8. Is it IT?
• Is Indian IT industry really an IT Industry?
– What IT stuff do we sell?
– IT Products? Or Services?
– Mostly selling manpower at hourly rates!
• Even NASSCOM calls it IT-BPO.
– IT Services 58%
– BPO 23%
– Engg. R&D, Software Products 19%
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 8

9. Most Indian IT
companies are
at these levels.
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 9

10. IT’s People Power
• Direct Employment to 2.8 million people
– Added 2,30,000 jobs in year 2012
– Indirectly employing 8.9 million people
• Indian Talent (or lack of it)
– Only 3.5 % of Indians are graduates (all disciplines)
• That’s less than 45 million out of 1.2 billion of us
– Only 25 % Engineers are employable
– Only 15 % Finance graduates are employable
– Only 10 % of other graduates are employable
– There’s a talent gap of 5 million people
– Only 3 out of 100 applicants get hired
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 10

11. Indian IT Business Model
• Low-cost High-volume Business Model
– Hire lots of people (high volume)
– At cheap cost (low pay)
– Do lots of low-end work (low cost)
– For small profit margins
– Rates: 15 to 25 US $ per hour per “resource”
– Struggle between “salary” and “billing rate”
– Linear growth
• Compare with Product-based model
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 11

12. Product Vs Service
Software Product Software Service
Cost of making Design & Development the biggest (~80%) Salary, and minimal training costs.
of the cost for software products. Resource is billed on time spent in a project.
Hardware products have raw materials, Can be in one project at a time.
processing and assembly costs too.
Labor Few but talented people required. Large number of people for more effort.
Cost is high, returns are much higher. Not everyone need to be highly skilled.
Keeping cost low is a goal!
Managing “bench” is raised to an art!
Revenue Sell packaged software with license to use; Revenue is linearly proportional to number of
Replicate into as many packages as people billed.
required and keep selling. Revenue is To increase revenue - Increase billing rate; or add
independent of the cost of making the more people – “invent work”!
product.
Force A software product can be sold to millions Can’t deploy a resource in multiple projects
multiplier by cloning, keeping the per-user cost simultaneously. We don’t have clones!
affordably small.
Cost reduction Not a concern. Replication cost is negligible Hire cheaper talent, reduce timelines, reduce
for customer anyways. quality of deliverables. It hurts!
Innovation Innovation is the essence of product Not always required.
development.
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 12

13. Product Vs Service
Apple Infosys TCS
Founded 1976 1988 1968
Employees 72,800 1,55,629 2,63,637
Revenue 156.508 7.0 10.17
(Y2012, billions, US$)
Profit 41.733 1.71 2.2
(Y2012, billions, US$)
Revenue (US$) 2.150 million 44,978 38,575
per employee
Profit (US$) per 5,73,255 10,987 8,344
employee
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 13

14. The Indian IT Players
• Came from manufacturing sector
– having process-oriented work
– that is effort-based
– and hardly needs creativity
• Factory model with labor intensive work
• Can we innovate with this mindset?
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 14

15. Where’s Intellectual Property?
• What is the Asset of Indian IT Companies?
– People?
• Attrition is high!
• They don’t invest in people.
– Real Estate?
• Could be!
– Patents?
• Intellectual Property is a foreign concept here.
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 15

16. Innovation
• Much-talked, hardly done.
– You hear IT Czars talk about it. That’s all.
• Can disrupt, and that’s a risk here!
– Why rock the boat?
– Why reinvent the wheel?
– Happy to just milk to cow.
• Needs creative people.
– The less said the better!
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 16

17. What’s the differentiation?
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 17

18. Engineering Education
• IT companies have to set up their own
training colleges!
• India has 1.5 million seats for Engineering
students.
– 3,50,000 engineers produced yearly
– Many seats are unutilized
• Many colleges are just operating in sheds.
– 75 % of the graduates will be unemployable
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 18

19. Conclusion
• Indian IT is still a fledgling industry
• Based on traditional trading business
model
• Hire talent at low cost
– Sell manpower making a marginal profit
– Innovation is very low
• We have an army of engineers
– But very less intellectual capital
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 19

20. Questions,
suggestions,
brickbats?
Copyright (c) Rajesh Varma, 2013 20