Education
Growing Need: Education forms the backbone of a nation and is one of the most important key indicators of a countrys growth and development. In fact, the rise of the knowledge economy at a global level has once again reinforced education, in all its forms (elementary, secondary, higher, vocational, and adult), as the key economic and business driver.

Changing dynamics: In the past, the government was the sole education provider as it was primarily considered a social service. However, it has become evident in the last decade or so that the government alone cannot bear the cost of the education sector. While the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap and has increasingly enhanced its profile in the education sector in India over the last decade, its role is still not properly defined and is far from satisfactory. This has made the Indian government change the education policies in the country and make the education sector more vibrant and flexible to meet the rapidly diversifying needs of our growing economy.

IT Prospects: The education segment in India is expected to see a major IT revolution by 2011, largely driven by the setting in of new concepts like online education, e-learning, and virtual learning environments. The IT spend in the education segment is going to be driven by the hardware as well as software. A major boost to the hardware is given by the fact that today the emphasis is on delivering the educational content in soft forms like on CDs, Internet, through mails, and other soft copies.

The major markets in the sector are services and PCs. But the software and networking markets in the segment are forecasted to be among the fastest growing IT markets in the vertical.

Retail and Wholesale
Retail sales in India contribute around 34% of the countrys GDP and 6-7% of the total employment. The total retail market in India in 2006 stood at Rs 1,557,500 crore, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.0% over the next five years. The current players in the industry are all geared up to scale up their operations by expanding their reach, and new global retail giants are looking up to tap the untapped potential.

Opportunities: To capture a share of the retail pie, existing players are quickly ramping up spaces and announcing ambitious expansion plans. New players are also rapidly testing and rolling out formats. Organized retail in India is on a high growth trajectory and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36.7% by 2011.

More Players: The sector is witnessing an influx of large domestic and international conglomerates, as they want to tap the retail opportunity and capture the large market share. In addition, large investment announcements have been made both in the front as well as back-end operations of the industry.

Increasing Consumer Interest: Rising disposable incomes, demographic changes, change in the perception of branded products, growing number of retail malls, and availability of cheap finance is providing a fillip to the industry. Players will focus on providing convenience, variety, and hygiene to differentiate themselves and tap the retail opportunity. Thus, price wars in the sector are highly unlikely in the next two to three years.

Challenges: Around 95% of this industry is unorganized, with only 5% being managed by organized players. Organized retailing across India is still at a nascent stage. Also, regulatory impediments, unavailability of low-priced real estate, inadequate infrastructure facilities, and a lack of trained manpower could prove to be a hindrance in the growth of the Indian retailing. Also with the entry of newer players in the sector, the competition is going to get intensified in the coming years, which can eat into the shares of existing players.

IT Prospects: Increasingly, the organized retail industry is realizing the importance of information technology in bringing about process improvements, which would result in greater operating efficiencies and hence, increased profits. But the awareness of IT systems that are available is low, resulting in poor decision-making. A number of organized retailers in India have installed solutions ranging from simple point-of-sale (PoS) systems to complex retail ERPs.

In the short term, the emphasis is on using existing IT resources to generate more information. For this, retailers are deploying customer relationship management (CRM) and online analytical processing (OLAP) software to run on top of their existing databases. In the next two to three years, retailers will focus on the expansion of their outlets and establishing the IT infrastructure. But in the longer term, they will look to weed out the non-value adding activities and will replace them with efficient systems and procedures. This will be the time when technologies like RFID and business intelligence will start taking precedence in IT deployments in the sector.

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