Ahead of the National Technology Leadership Forum summit, the National Association of Software & Services Companies (Nasscom) released its annual summation of the IT industry performance for FY21. According to the report, despite a global pandemic and initial uncertainty the industry registered an overall growth of 2.3 percent with revenues growing from $190bn last year to $194 bn this year. While IT exports now stand at $150bn compared to $147bn last year, domestic demand also grew from $43bn last year to $45 bn this year. Out of the total revenues of the industry, the hardware segment led the overall year-on-year growth at 4.1 percent at $16bn, Indian IT services are now just a billion short of reaching $100 bn in size - growing at 2.7 percent YoY. The BPM industry also registered a growth of 2.3 percent contributing $38bn to overall revenues. Software products grew 2.7 percent to reach $9bn. "Not only have we emerged more resilient, more relevant from the crisis, but we have also been the bell-weather to lead the fight against Covid, and playing a crucial role in leading the country to recovery," said Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM.
Standing at 8 percent of the GDP and with 52 percent share in services exports from the country, IT industry added 138,000 net new hires this fiscal taking overall industry workforce to 4.47 million. The digital revenues now form nearly a third of the industry revenues at $50-53 billion growing at five times the overall services growth rate. The pandemic year also saw a greater shift (10%) to outcome-based pricing. Offshoring also increased by 4 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. Attributing increased offshoring to a combination of factors, U.B. Pravin Rao, Chairman NASSCOM, said: "Irrespective of location we have been able to deliver during pandemic without a drop in productivity or compromising on quality, which has given confidence to clients". He further said that the industry has successfully demonstrated remote delivery amid travel restrictions.
"Clients will be much more open to different hybrid models which could potentially result in even higher offshoring," he said.
In the coming year, Nasscom aims to not just prioritise strengthening the talent pool and deepening its engagements with government to enhance market opportunities, but also work towards strengthening the adoption of deep-tech.