‘India needs to find new markets’

BOMBAY – India’s outsourcing industry needs to look for new partners and new markets to continue its remarkable growth, Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam said Friday.

Speaking at a meeting of the country’s top software professionals, Kalam said that while North America and Europe accounted for the biggest chunk of India’s outsourcing and software markets, it needs to target other markets to drive growth. “We must partner with other countries in Asia-Pacific – Korea, Philippines and Singapore to encourage innovation and creativity and increase value for customers,” Kalam said on the final day of a three-day conference on information technology.”We must create a market in Africa.”India is the global leader in outsourcing, and has captured about half of the business worldwide.The United States makes up 70 per cent of the market for Indian outsourcing.Top multinational companies farm out work from infrastructure support, to writing software to call centres to countries such as India, with its low wages and millions of skilled workers.India’s software and back-office outsourcing exports in the fiscal year ending March 31 will total US$23,4 billion (N$142,74 billion), 32 per cent over the previous year, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies.The association has said the country is on track to reaching annual outsourcing exports of US$60 billion by March 2010.But Kalam said the challenge would be to set a target of US$200 billion by 2008.-Nampa-AP”We must partner with other countries in Asia-Pacific – Korea, Philippines and Singapore to encourage innovation and creativity and increase value for customers,” Kalam said on the final day of a three-day conference on information technology.”We must create a market in Africa.”India is the global leader in outsourcing, and has captured about half of the business worldwide.The United States makes up 70 per cent of the market for Indian outsourcing.Top multinational companies farm out work from infrastructure support, to writing software to call centres to countries such as India, with its low wages and millions of skilled workers.India’s software and back-office outsourcing exports in the fiscal year ending March 31 will total US$23,4 billion (N$142,74 billion), 32 per cent over the previous year, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies.The association has said the country is on track to reaching annual outsourcing exports of US$60 billion by March 2010.But Kalam said the challenge would be to set a target of US$200 billion by 2008.-Nampa-AP