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The case traces the genesis of NASSCOM and presents a decision situation faced by the new president who has to formulate a road map in the light of changed circumstances. NASSCOM has been an exemplary trade association. However, it faces challenges that can jeopardize the future if the industry. While the challenges do not have short term effect on the growing Indian IT-BPO industry, as the active industry ally NASSCOM's new leader has to ensure long term success of IT-BPO industry. The case can be best used to understand the IT industry dynamics through the eyes of an exemplary trade body and also understand how a trade association in emerging economies can play an important role to fill institutional voids.

India emerged as one of the fastest growing economies of the world during the 1990s because of the spectacular dynamism shown by the services sector. India’s services sector has been burgeoning fast and one of the major driver’s of the growth of services sector is Information Technology (IT) and Information Technol ogy Enabled Services (ITES). It is well documented in literature that IT impacts growth by different channels. In this study we try to empirically verify the question: Can IT and ITES be an engine of growth? Using micro‐level data of 100 households of 20 IT and ITES firms along with secondary data we tried to estimate the extent of indirect employment generation at macro‐level and the share of IT and ITES in total employment and total value added. According to our study, one job for skilled professional employed in IT and ITES spins off jobs for 0.48 semi‐skilled, low skills or unskilled workers. As per our estimates, the 16 lakh workers who are expected to be directly employed in IT sector in the FY 2008 would generate secondary em ployment for 7,68,000 people which would constitute 0.16 per cent of total employment. However, the share of consumption expenditure of 16 lakh professionals would be 20 per cent of total value added. Assuming the consumption expenditure of the IT and ITES workers and total value added to be the same/constant when we tried to assess the contribution of consumption expenditure of 2.3 million workers (who are projected to be directly absorbed by IT sector by 2010, NASSCOM, 2005) to total value added it comes out to be 29 per cent of total value added. The study says that the proportion of IT‐ITES in total employment may be small but its contribution to total value added is still very high. Indeed IT and ITES can be an engine of growth in India’s economy by way of generating demand impulses in the economy as has been hypothesised and shown through the present study. Keeping in view the contributions of this sector and its huge untapped potential as evident from the present study and various other studies, there is a need for introduction and implementation of policy initiatives to address the challenges faced by this sector and to sustain the growth driven by the services sector.

Mr. N. Krishnakumar is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of MindTree Consulting and the Chairperson of Emerging Companies Forum, NASSCOM, India. MindTree Consulting was founded in 1999. It is an international IT and R&D services company that delivers business and technology solutions through global software development. MindTree is coheadquartered in Somerset, New Jersey and Bangalore, India, and employs over 7500 professionals worldwide. It has development centers in both India and US. In 2009, MindTree was named among the world’s top 100 outsourcing service providers by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals and has been consistently ranked high among the Best Place to Work in India. National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) is the Indian chamber of commerce and is a consortium that serves as an interface to the Indian software industry and Indian BPO industry. It has more than 1200 organization members, of which over 250 are global companies from across US, UK, EU and APAC. NASSCOM was set up in 1988, at Mumbai to facilitate business and trade in software and services and to encourage advancement of research in software technology. The Emerging Companies Forum, one of the four forums of NASSCOM, is aimed at strategizing the growth potential of small and medium outsourcing enterprises.

The IT industry, particularly IT enabled services (ITES), in India has shown remarkable growth over the past decade and continues to show resilience even in the face of a global downturn in the sector. While India has not been able to match China in manufacturing prowess, it may have found its competitive advantage in the area of knowledge‐based services to which its factor endowments are uniquely suited. Yet, the tremendous potential and promise of this sector in spurring economic growth and national competitiveness may not be realized, if the numerous obstacles to the sector’s growth are not removed. This paper traces the evolution of the IT industry in India, its positives and negatives and its potential to contribute to India’s global competitiveness. Structural barriers in the national environment to the growth of this industry are identified and discussed. Conclusions and policy implications are presented.

Globalisation accompanied by the rapid development of the information and communication technology (ICT) has largely boosted international trade in services over the past decade or so. Because services account for a higher proportion of production costs, firms are taking every opportunity to go for lower-cost solutions for the provision of business process services. International sourcing of business support services has, therefore, been a preferred solution to the ongoing cost pressures and related skill shortages experienced in many developed countries.

The paper aims to unravel the congruence of entrepreneurship and India’s excellence in information technology (IT). Considering the fact that entrepreneurship is a multifaceted concept encompassing a complex set of contiguous and overlapping constructs, the study takes into consideration interlinkages between the institutional environment, the nature of the industry and the responses and expectations that influenced entrepreneurship. The study complements these factors by analysing the sequential transformation of the Indian IT industry owing to the advent of outsourcing opportunities and concomitant ramifications on entrepreneurial activities. In effect, the study highlights the endogeneity in the system wherein entrepreneurs have continually adapted to the industry dynamics resulting in its significant expansion.

The methodology adopted is the historical research method. Fundamentally idiographic, it helps in understanding contemporary issues, how they arose and how their characteristics unfolded over time. To this end, historical contextualisation has been carried out as an interpretative or analytical activity to capture the dynamic process of entrepreneurship. The idea was to capture the broad consequences of entrepreneurial interactions and processes over a long-time horizon classified into six different phases since inception. The historical contextualisation enabled us not only to pinpoint the disequilibrium processes at each phase of development that ushered in structural changes in the industry but also to identify and examine the complex interactions between the various factors that led to the growth of entrepreneurship.

Findings reveal that the Indian IT industry has undergone a series of disruptive changes since inception. Disequilibrium in the market plays a critical role in the initiation of entrepreneurship. In the formative phases, disequilibrium is initiated by the “adaptive” responses of the entrepreneurs, whereas in the advanced phases, entrepreneurial process is augmented by the “creative” responses resulting in the perpetuation of disequilibrium. Such shifts in entrepreneurial responses indicate a gradual progression from “gradient” to more “heuristic” search efforts on the part of the entrepreneurs. This progression testifies the perpetuation of entrepreneurship in imparting sustainability to the growth momentum of the industry in the foreseeable future.

The study attempts to fill three important gaps in the literature: First, enrich the Austrian economics with empirical findings. Second, integrate two different strands of literature on entrepreneurship and evolution of India’s IT sector using unique configuration. Third, extend the literature on entrepreneurship in the Indian context to capture entrepreneurial prudence in the Indian IT sector and thereby enrich the literature with newer findings and richer insights.

Analysis of factors that imparted entrepreneurial prudence in the Indian IT sector can endow policymakers with valuable information for enhancing growth in industries that are having a close association with the IT industry in the “product space”.

The study is original on account of the unique configuration that it has adopted to unravel the complexity embedded in the concept of entrepreneurship considering a long-time horizon of six decades since inception which includes the analysis of disequilibrium; the entrepreneurship-institution interlinkages; the nature of the industry; and the role of outsourcing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate both long-run and short-run dynamics among the software and services export, investment in information technology (IT) and GDP in India and to investigate the direction of the relationship among the given three macro-economic variables.

The time series data have been taken to investigate the long-run relationship exists among the variables. Annual data were collected from the NASSCOM Annual Reports, Planning Commission of India and Reserve Bank of India during the period 1980–2016. Cointegration and vector error correction model have been used for analyzing the causal relationship among investment in IT, software exports and GDP in India.

Cointegration results confirm that software and services export, investment in IT and GDP are cointegrated, implying that there exists the long-run equilibrium relationship among the given three macro-economic variables. Similarly, vector error correction mechanism Granger causality results hold that there is uni-directional long-run causality running from software and services export and investment in IT to GDP, implying that software and services export is an important determinant of economic growth in India.

The limitations of the paper are generalization of the results and proxy variable for IT investments.

The paper has implications for the expansion of market concentration, diversification of software and service exports, and investments in R&D for increasing competitiveness of the industry in the global market.

This paper focuses on originality in the analysis of the relationship among the given variables software exports, investment in the IT sector and GDP in India. All the work has been done in original by the authors and the work used have been acknowledged properly.

The aim of this paper is to extend a conceptual understanding of business process outsourcing (BPO) and its prevailing practices in the background of the post‐liberalized economic scenario of India. Efforts have also been made to discuss the major work verticals of Indian ITES‐BPO industry, which further reveals the fact of its domain expertise and in‐time delivery of services in a pre‐determined standard with least possible cost that has made India a BPO hub. The later part of the study deals with an empirical SWOT‐analysis that highlights the key factors that have significant bearing to the very flourishment of this sunshine industry.

The data collected for the analysis are secondary in nature and include various journals, periodicals, survey reports and on‐line business reports/news. The techniques like trend analysis and SWOT analysis in particular have been implemented for the purpose of study.

The paper found that in addition to the growth of traditional industries, patronization of this emerging sector is also a high necessity, looking at its socio‐economic contribution to the society on one hand and considerable amount of employment creation and income generation capabilities for the bright mass of the country that restrict “brain drain”, on the other hand.

The paper describes, analyses and critiques the outsourcing industry in India with reference to a core theory base. It is expected to be helpful in stimulating the analytical mind of the researchers and industry practitioner of the area for scientific decision making and furthering the research on this particular aspect of business.

The aims of the paper are to investigate IT software and service export function for India. First, cointegration tests have been used to investigate the long-run equilibrium relationship of the given variables. Second, long-run coefficients and associated error correction mechanism are estimated.

Annual time series data on IT software and service exports, human capital, exchange rate, investment in IT, external demand and openness index have been used for the present study during the period 1980–2017. The data are collected from the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), Planning Commission of India, University Grants Commission (UGC) of India, real effective exchange rate (REER) database and World Bank development indicators. Auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is used to analyze both short-run and long-run dynamic behaviour of economic variables with appropriate asymptotic inferences.

Results of the analysis show the stable long-run equilibrium relationship among the given variables. It is found that external demand, exchange rate, human capital and openness index have a substantial long-run impact on the IT software and service exports. We also found that the coefficient of error correction term is negative and significant at 1% of the level of significance, which confirms the existence of stable long-run relationship which means adjustment will take place when there is a short-run deviation to its long-run equilibrium after a shock.

There may be other determinants of software and service exports apart from those considered by the present study. Due to the non-availability of data, the study considers only important determinants that determine the software and service exports in India. The IT exports are an emerging and dynamic field of economic activity and the rate of change is so rapid that the relevance of individual factors may change over time. The study period is also limited to available data.

The paper has implications for achieving sustainability in IT software and service exports growth. It is recommended that policies directed at improving the performance of IT software and service exports should largely consider the long-run behaviour of these variables.

This paper focuses on originality in the analysis of the relationship among the given variables including IT software and service exports, human capital, exchange rate, investment in IT, external demand and openness index in India. All the work has been done in original by the authors, and the work used has been acknowledged properly.