IT must boom in tier II-tier III cities as well: Nasscom
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com View: 272 Date: 2013-09-25

IT industry must boom even in the tier and tier III cities as a major chunk of the talent that is employed in the IT sectorcomes from these areas and it is a vaibale economic proposition as well, said a top officialof the apex IT industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).

"I think the industry is concentrated in the sixmajor cities and it needs to spread. The spreadof industry in these areas will lower costs and congestion. It is a viable proposition as with the progress in technology, we even have the skills of managing dispersed teams," Nasscom chief economist and director-general (policy outreach) Anupam Khanna said on the sidelines of an event at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

Talking about various initiatives of the Nasscom to promote IT in tier II and tier III cities, Khanna said, "Many foreign companies speak to Nasscom when they come to India. So we also try to encourage them to look in this direction. We have been actually talking to government on this front and if you look at the revamped SEZ policy, they have accepted all our recommendation like there would be no minimum land requirement for setting up IT/ITeS SEZs. We are also saying that if the government provides incentives, it must provide for job creation."

Khanna pointed out that almost 50% - 60% of the IT talent comes from small towns, hence the government must focus on building social infrastructure in these places that will help attract companies and retain talent.

Speaking about new trends in IT, he said that the emergence of social, mobile, big data, analytics (SMAC) has made the atmosphere very conducive for the growth of small and medium enterprises as well as start ups in the country.

Meanwhile, he also added that it was important that the Indian IT companies moved up thevalue chain through innovation and retained its core competency of providing services at competitive costs. "We are beyond the phase when cost arbitrage was the main strategy for IT business but that doesn’t mean that we can forget cost competitiveness. While a certain section has a view that the IT sector must not bother if the voice-based services go to Philippines as it is low cost job, we do not buy that. We need all jobs but we also need to move up the value ladder," he added.

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