Nasscom 2000@India Tryst with Digital Destiny

All
roads lead to Rome, They say.

From 2-5 February, all roads in the commercial capital of India
(read Mumbai) led to the 2 lakh square metre wide area behind
the World Trade Centre–the venue for Nasscom
2000@-India. The arid land behind the most well known landmark
in the city was transformed in a matter of few days to a spot
where the big tags in the Indian IT industry and a slew of new
kids on the block showcased their wares and new technologies
taking the world by storm today. Equally frenzied was the
ambience in the Oberoi hotel with more than 800 delegates
turning an ear to the prophets of boom.

The exhibition venue
housed around 100 plus exhibitors with one pavilion dedicated to
dot.com companies. Notable among them were Cyber Astro and
ITmall.com. According to official figures, more than one lakh
people visited the venue spread over four days.

The New Ethics

"Creating wealth is no crime," proclaimed Pramod
Mahajan, union minister for IT, referring to the theme of expo,
"Creating Wealth in a Digital Economy". Inaugurating
the event, he assured the industry of various sops to fuel the
growth of IT in India and to do away with red tape. Pointing out
the various initiatives undertaken by the government to make IT
as a growth engine for the overall economic development, he
said, "We need to take IT from classes to masses. We do not
need knowledge islands." Vilas Rao Deshmumkh, chief
minister of Maharashtra, emphasized the efforts being taken by
his government to expand the IT infrastructure in the state and
develop towns like Aurangabad and Nagpur into IT hubs.

However,
it was Gururaj Deshpande, founder and chairman of Sycamore
Networks Inc., who hogged the limelight. People thronged to
listen to one of the most successful Indians in corporate
America and his valuable tips on how to succeed in a network
economy. "A new revolution is unfolding before our eyes.
India missed the industrial revolution. But we cannot afford to
miss the bus this time. Simply because speed is the essence
here," said Deshpande. He laid special thrust on the need
for world-class telecom infrastructure and ability to compete in
global markets as the key to make most of the Net revolution.

He went on to add that the
roots of the current revolution lies in how IT has moved from
backroom to the front desk in the last 20 years. He described
the metamorphosis of IT from being an internal tool to make an
organization more efficient, to a tool that connects consumers
with producers of services and products. "In other words, a
fundamental shift and a very different role for IT, from being
just an MIS tool to a tool to restructure the economy by
influencing every segment of the industry through Internet and
e-commerce. An influence, which through the free flow and
instant access to information, will empower the consumer to
gather all the information he needs and set the agenda for the
producers for what he needs. The same flow of information will
also allow companies to promote the efficient and profit making
parts of their businesses rather than the inefficient
ones."Deshpande pointed out the
need for a strong conviction to participate in this revolution.
"Individuals will need to be entrepreneurial. They need to
have strong convictions–no matter whether they fail or make it
big. Keeping the optimism alive is the basic tenet of success in
this business," he added.

In the same breath, the
richest Indian living abroad cautioned that strong conviction is
not enough. He talked about the need to think big as no one can
survive by thinking small in a global economy. And to be able to
think big and global, one needs to surround oneself with
excellent, talented, and skilled workforce. It is essential to
have a world-class team to become a worldclass player.
"Speed is the key. Another issue is transparency.
Transparency here would mean clarity of vision of the
organization and goals and a clear understanding of the
competition."

But conviction and a
world-class team cannot survive without a good environment.
According to Deshpande, a suitable environment is one that
promotes risk through venture capital, and offers suitable
physical infrastructure such as power and telecom to work in.
One also needs rules that are simple and a government that plays
the role of a referee and not the one who decides the winner and
losers of the game. "In other words, a suitable exit policy
to exit and reinvent themselves," he concluded.

Looking Ahead

Other eminent speakers who talked about various aspects of IT at
Nasscom included Montek Singh Ahluvalia, member of
Planning Commission, Amitabh Kumar of VSNL, Dr Krishna Palepu,
Harvard Business School, and Dr Ian Pearson, futurologist, BT
Labs.

Dewang Mehta, Nasscom
president, revealed that he had received more than 1,000
business plans to new start-ups and at least 50 of them would go
on stream in the months to come. He added that venture capital
inflows into the country had grown by over 100 percent from the
previous years to reach Rs 1,400 crore in 1999. This is expected
to increase further by 120 percent to touch Rs 3,200 crore by
the end of current fiscal. Based on these projections, Nasscom
envisages India attracting annual investments to the tune of $10
billion by 2008 and being among the top five locations for the
creation of technology ventures. Nasscom has also been
commissioned to draft IT action plan for Maharshtra following
senior leaders from BJP and Indian National Congress reaching a
broad consensus on IT industry issues.

The New Spirit

To facilitate wealth generation and to promote the spirit of
entrepreneurship in the country, special venture capital
clinics were conducted at Nasscom 2000 where advice and
monitoring was provided to budding entrepreneurs by leading
venture capitalists including Kanwal Rekhi, president, TiE. In
addition, the conference had panel discussions on key areas
relevant to Indian entrepreneurship such as "Challenges for
Spider (dotcom) Companies" with participation from leading
industry spokespersons including Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief,
Red Herring magazine, and Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO, Rediff.com.

Recent
initiatives of the Indian government such as permitting venture
capital funds to invest in the country on the same terms as
foreign investors and permitting them to invest more than 40
percent of their paid-up capital in a single company have given
a fillip to the process of promoting and funding
entrepreneurship in India. However, Nasscom felt the need for
outlining steps from the government to further encourage the
growth of venture capital funds.

Nasscom also plans to set
up an entrepreneurial club to provide seed capital to Internet
start-ups and help connect people with venture capitalists and
angel investors. It aims to play the role of a catalyst spurring
the creation of wealth and 50 new start-up companies are
expected to be launched in key growth areas such as value-added
IT services, IT enabled services, and software products.

With the next Nasscom show
scheduled to be held in New York in September this year, this
apex body of Indian software companies seems to be all set to
play anchor role in integrating Indian software industry into
global economy and putting India on the world IT map.