$100 bn dose may revive IT industry in Q3: experts

Information Technology (IT) industry is likely to bounce back by the third quarter of the current fiscal. The industry has already started showing some positive outlook. The growth will be driven by power, media, utilities and especially health care, according to industry representatives. They added, global health care industry alone has the potential to give business worth over $100 billion (around Rs 500,000 crore) to Indian IT companies. In his special address at Emerge Out Conclave 2008, organised by NASSCOM, which was inaugurated today at Chennai, Som Mittal, president, NASSCOM said that the current down was manmade crisis and will not long last. The industry did not witness any negative growth for the last 40 years and was witnessing, especially in the last 15 years, only positive growth. The industry was not prepared to face the sudden crisis. Customers are not questioning about competitiveness about the Indian IT industry and still they are ready to invest in IT. If the industry going to continue it’s focus on the existing market and customers growth would be only 50 per cent. Whereas the untapped market will help the industry do triple the growth of the industry, which is estimated to be $500 billion and can grow upto $1.2 trillion over the next five years. R Chandrasekaran, president and managing director, Cognizant said that companies, especially SMEs, should focus on health care sector, which is recession proof. He noted between 2003 and 2008 world-wide health care spending was around $4.1 trillion to $4.8 trillion. The US alone had spent 15 per cent of its GDP on the health care and planning to increase it to 40-50 per cent in 25-30 years. As the US government has made mandate that all the medical records should me maintained electronically the amount expected to conversion and maintain the record is around $20 billion (around Rs 100,000 crore) in US alone. Similarly, UK and Canada are planning to spend $30 billion (around Rs 150,000 crore) each all these are good opportunity for the Indian IT firms. Increase usage of web, data warehouse, analysis and self portal in the health care sector will create more opportunity for Indian IT industry. Comment on opportunity for Indian BPO companies in health care, Chandrasekaran said, of total spent on health care of $4.5-$4.8 trillion, 14 per cent was towards administration, which is in the tune of around $60 billion (around Rs 300,000 crore) to $70 billion (around Rs 350,000 crore) for billing, transcription and remote diagnostics. In health sector, Indian IT companies got opportunities on adminstartion outsourcing, remote medical diagnostics, drug research and clinical trial, said Chandrasekaran.