It certainly didn’t look as if the IT industry was recovering from a slowdown. The annual Nasscom event wore its usual glitzy look, bursting as it was, with software executives, country development officials, VCs, and government officials.

Communication, IT and Parliamentary Affairs minister Pramod Mahajan inaugurated the Nasscom International IT Conference 2002 for the third consecutive year. After paying rich tributes to the late Nasscom president Dewang Mehta, Mahajan threw in some interesting statistics— The Indian IT industry currently exports to 102 countries. Only 10% of the total revenue comes from 94 countries with the US accounting for a whopping 62 % followed by 24% from Europe, and 4-5 % from Japan. Mahajan’s three-point prescription to overcome the slowdown went like this— Focus on geographies beyond the US, look at the emerging domestic market, and look at BPO as a high growth opportunity.

In his keynote address in the ‘Industry Leadership Talk’ session, TCS CEO S Ramadorai said, "I see the future unfolding a transition from the technical software services of today to knowledge domain-based services enabled by IT tomorrow. That is the value transition we need to be prepared for, by actively investing in the creation of this future". The key message was that the industry, academia, and the government must collaborate today, for a better tomorrow.

While accepting the onus of sustaining the growth of the Indian IT industry by exploring merging opportunity markets and technologies, Nasscom urged Mahajan to increase investment in IT implementation by the government sector. Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said, "Nasscom estimates that government spending accounted for only 15% of India’s total IT spend in 2001-02. Keeping in mind the future growth of the Indian domestic market, it is critical for us to not only scale the efficiency of current investment but also identify priority areas in the government sector for further investment."

The event also saw a courtship battle among countries- Canada, UK, Belgium, Malaysia, Singapore, Italy, Germany, Australia, Japan, and even Wales and Scotland, wooing investment into their respective countries. But, this definitely added the ‘global’ dimension to the event. A sample pitch from Nigel Griffiths, Minister for Small Business, UK, "I am convinced that the IT sector in UK has a brilliant future. I want you to be part of that future! You are a powerhouse of IT human resources. Of the visas we granted to incoming IT workers last year, 63 % went to Indians. I can promise you the warmest of welcomes." The theme of the Nasscom 2002 Conference was ‘India Software Inc: Sustaining Growth’.

Parallel to the conference was ICT India 2002- a joint IT show put up by Nasscom, MAIT, and CII. Also inaugurated by Pramod Mahajan, the event was attended by Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Nasscom president Kiran Karnik, CII president Subodh Bhargava and MAIT president Vinay Deshpande.

With an expected visitor base of over 2,00,000 spread over 4 days, the show housed 300 stalls put up by 150 exhibitors. The theme of the show was, ‘Growing the domestic market’ with participation from leading companies like Wipro, TCS, VSNL, AMD, Intel, Hughes, Jetro, Rolta, CIDCO, the Gujarat government, the Kara government and the Indo-Italian chamber of commerce. The exhibition was set up by CyberExpo, India’s leading IT exhibitions company.

The conference presented a preview of the Nasscom-McKinsey 2002 study to be released in April 2002. The special session moderated by Nasscom chairman Phiroze Vandrevala and Nasscom vice chairman Arun Kumar was addressed by Noshir Kaka. Gautam Kumra of McKinsey discussed the emerging forces shaping the Indian IT services industry and detailed the initiatives that need to be taken by the IT industry in order to sustain growth in the immediate future.

The conference witnessed a historic event, an ‘e-letter day’ as termed by Mahajan. India’s first digital signature was adopted by Pramod Mahajan in an e-mail sent to the PM. The second digital signature was taken up by Bimal Jalan, RBI Governor. SafeScrypt, a Sify company, became India’s first Certifying Authority (CA) for digital signatures. K N Gupta, Controller of certifying authorities revealed that more CAs would be appointed shortly and the area would get a real boost in times to come.

Easwaradas Satyan in Mumbai

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