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‘IT industry to witness double digit growth in 2022-23’
The Software Technology Parks of India, which catalysed the growth of IT and IT-enabled services, hopes to replicate the model in the data centre and software products space. The STPI has begun consultation with the stakeholders to drive growth in these two areas by removing any roadblocks.

“India has potential to become a data centre hub for the Asia-Pacific region. We will talk to the industry players, identify the roadblocks and remove them,” STPI Director-General Arvind Kumar told BusinessLine.

“The STPI played a good role three decades ago by removing the issues like connectivity to pave the way for the growth of IT and ITES industry. We will help the industry to expand to tier-II and -III cities and address the challenges like availability of quality manpower there,” he said.

Data centres
The country has a good scope to become a data centre hub for the Asia-Pacific region. “We are located strategically. We will provide an enabling environment, including the possibility of offering a PLI-like support,” he said.

He said the government was in the process of formulating a policy for data centres. “The STPI will be the implementation agency for the policy. We have done a consultation with the industry players in Chennai,” he said adding that the STPI will enable the products space reached the same heights that the services industry achieved in the last 25 years.

A consultation meeting with industry players would be held shortly in Bengaluru or Delhi to discuss the pain points, if any, and measures to remove them.

In the products space, the STPI sees a huge scope in fintech, healthcare and in deep tech areas like Blockchain.

He said the STPI had already established about 20 Centres for Entrepreneurship to promote research and development in specific domains. “Located in different cities, these centres helped the local experts to work on products in technologies like IoT and Blockchain,” he said.

Growth outlook
Stating that the IT industry grew significantly despite the pandemic, he said that the industry would grow in double digits in the current financial year. “We expect the same momentum to continue this year,” he said.

The growth will predominantly come from technologies and services around areas such as fintech, healthcare and newer technologies like Blockchain.

New Delhi: Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India working with the objective of encouraging, promoting, boosting Software Exports, and nurturing the startup ecosystem in the country celebrated 31st Foundation Day on the 6th June 2022.

“Exports through STPI units have grown from Rs. 17 crores in FY92 to Rs. 5.69 lakh crore in FY22, this has happened because we have been an enabler, we have never acted as a regulator. We have shown to this world that if you want to see the growth of industry, in place of regulating it, enable it,” underlined Shri Arvind Kumar.

In line with the resounding success of the Indian IT services industry, STPI is now also augmenting itself to become a catalyst to make India a Startup and Product Nation. In this endeavor, STPI has launched 20 Centres of Entrepreneurship and 12 NGIS centres across the country to accelerate innovation-led entrepreneurship in emerging technology domains.

Speaking on the inaugural address at the 31st Foundation Day ceremony Shri Arvind Kumar, Director General of STPI congratulated all the employees and said, “STPI has won the trust of all stakeholders including government & industry in STPI and this trust infuses transparency in the organization.”

STPI started its journey from 3 centers and now has 62 centers pan-India with 54 centres in Tier II and Tier III cities. Today, the US$200-plus billion IT industry, comprising 18,000-plus firms that directly employ 4.47 million-strong workforce, that contributes 8% of GDP is a testimony to the STPI’s resolute performance in transforming the Indian IT industry into a global outsourcing destination for software exports.

The first historic event that heralded the genesis of the IT Industry in India was the establishment of three Software Technology Parks at Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, and Pune in 1989. Consequently, on 5th June 1991, these three STPs were merged to create a single entity Software Technology Parks of India.

The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) is working on modalities to promote software products in the country. Through various initiatives, it is planning to replicate the success the country achieved in software services. Currently, India is among the top nations in providing software services.

“We will focus on software products to capitalise on dynamic global trends in technology adoption. We have achieved success in software services, now we plan to replicate the same in software products. We plan to create similar ecosystem for software products,” said Arvind Kumar, Director General, STPI, while talking to The Tribune recently.

“Akin to software services, we want to promote software products industry and become a world leader in it,” he said.

A software company develops a single product or a product suite and runs the business by selling it to clients, whereas a software services company may or may not have a product. Their focus is on providing software development or any service related with software products such as testing and UI/UX design etc.

On future initiatives, he said the STPI was chalking out strategies to bring IT/ITeS industry to tier-II and tier-III cities. “Our focus is on Centre for Entrepreneurship. We plan to develop at least 25 such centres across the country. Currently, we have 20 such centres in various domains.”

Kumar said the Centre would soon come out with New Data Centre Policy to boost data centres in the country. “We are aiming at becoming one of the major hubs of data centres in Asia,” he said.

Tribune News Service

Vijay C Roy
Chandigarh, May 31