This is part of the follow-up to the recent government move to recognise IT-enabled services as software exports which will open up new vistas for small and medium-sized IT companies. This is expected to fetch the country Rs 50,000 crore in software exports in a 10-year time-frame, giving employment to over 10 lakh people, claim experts.

"The market for IT-enabled services is, if not not more, equal in size to that of software services," says Ravindra Gupta, secretary, Department of Electronics.

The Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC), however, claims that the market potential for IT-enabled services worldwide is double the size that of software and services market which is estimated to be $500billion in 1998. These include activities such as dataprocessing in the financial and service sector, providing graphic information services, publishing, creating web sites, multimedia content and database. "Though these jobs are on the lower end of value chain, they are are of perennial nature," says Gupta.

The government move to recognise IT-enabled services as software exports will boost ancillarisation, feels R H Naqvi, executive director, ESC. "A fillip to sub-contracting would mean more business for smaller players. Established players can now take on more jobs abroad and pass it on to smaller players." With possibility to provide employment to lakhs, this also opens up new opportunities for private sector in the training field.

To build up a pool of IT-manpower, the government plans to double intake of students in various IT-related courses in IITs and regional engineering colleges. "The government would be spending over Rs 300 crore in running software capability enhancement programmes in IITs.The Department of Electronics also proposes to set up a national-level institute for software training."

Upgrading of courses run by the Mumbai-based National Centre for Software Technology is also in the offing. While ERNET is working towards networking all higher education institution in the country, this is slated to become a virtual university in years to come. "These measures are expected to generate at least 20,000 additional manpower per year," says Gupta.

What comes to India's competitive advantage in tapping this huge market is availability of cheap technical manpower, says Vivek Singhal, regional chairman, ESC. While ESC plans to organise roadshows abroad to hardsell the Indian edge, efforts are on to mobilise support from the offshore offices of leading industry players to drive home the points. In a bid to spawn IT-entrepreneurship in even smaller cities, the government is working towards starting entrepreneurial development programmes in various universities and regional engineering colleges."While more software technology parks are proposed to be set up in various states, we have asked the existing STPs to put out details in websites on how to set up software and services companies and tap this burgeoning market," says Gupta.

The government is working towards making plug-and-work facilities available to aspiring entrepreneurs and measures are being worked out to attract private sector involvement in this field. To facilitate start-ups and meet the working capital needs of cash-strapped small companies, the Reserve Bank of India is expected to come out with guidelines on easier availability of working capital finance. A series of amendments to company's law, RBI and SEBI guidelines have been suggested to make venture capital financing more attractive. Recognising sweat equity, equating venture capital funds to mutual funds, allowing profits in one venture to be set off against losses in others are some of the amendments being planned, say officials in the Department of Electronics.

However,weak telecom infrastructure can play the spoilsport, fear most entrepreneurs. But government officials allay such doubts. "The Department of Telecommunication is pepping up telecom infrastructure by setting up a high speed datacom backbone which should be up by year 2000," says Gupta.Country-wide microwave facility and satellite hook up are also in the offing. The private Vsat networks criss-crossing the country have lot of under utilised capacity as do their defence networks.

Flexibility in terms of use of such networks and their interconnectivity will go a long way in easing the load off additional traffic generated, say government officials. "While the private ISPs would be soon entering the market to provide ready internet access, the VSNL too is expected to set up more nodes in smaller cities," says Gupta.

"The opening up of the market to private ISPs is alone expected to generate business in excess of Rs 650 crore in a three-year time frame and small businesses would make the most of it," feelsRavi Sanghal of IDC (India), a market research company. However, with the electronic-commerce policy yet to be in place, Sanghal does not see much headway in this direction.

"Since business is the driving force of Internet, without substantial content which could be useful to Indian business, electronic commerce itself may turn out to be a non-starter," fears Sanghal.

To give a further fillip to software exports from India, Sameer Kochhar of Delhi-based Skoch Consultancy suggests that services provided by IT-consultants to overseas clients (in which they are paid in dollars) should be treated as software exports. "This will help in harnessing intellectual capital in which Indians have a clear edge over many in the international market."

The worldwide market for providing consultancy is a multi-million dollar one and has the advantage of a low start up cost, says Kochhar. "This would spur many software professionals to start on their own."

Most industry players agree what India has achieved till now insoftware exports is just a tip of the iceberg. It has exploited only a fraction of its potential. "The recent sops provided by the government to boost IT penetration and software exports are steps in the right direction but not sufficient to fully tap opportunities. What one needs is a more concerted effort on all directions," says Sanghal.

Not many in the industry would disagree with him.