India must improve infrastructure to compete with China: Murthy
By ANIWednesday, October 27, 2010
BANGALORE - India needs to improve its infrastructure significantly if it has to compete with China, said N. R. Narayana Murthy, non-executive Chairman of Infosys Technologies.
ddressing an All India Management Association (AIMA) Conference here, Murthy said that improved efficiency and lowered costs are the only way India can compete with cheaper countries for IT and IT-Enabled Services (ITES).
“At this point of time, to be able to compete with a country like China and even countries like Vietnam and others who happen to be even cheaper than India, it’s not going to be very easy unless we improve our infrastructure significantly, unless we enhance the efficiency of our supply chain, and at the same time bring down the cost of those services. It’s not going to be easy for India to compete with these countries,” said Murthy.
Murthy added that the Indian IT industry is growing at the rate of 20 percent per annum, and in the next decade would reach a figure of 300 billion dollars.
“The industry grows at 20 percent per annum. In the next decade, we can reach that figure clearly of 300 billion dollars from the current figure of what is 50 billion dollars, or so. On the other hand, if we grow at 10 percent, then we can indeed do that in, perhaps, in about 16-17 years. And most often we have performed better than what the projections have said. Therefore, I think we are all quite positive that there will be great opportunities,” added Murthy.
He said that the areas where incremental opportunities can be seen are the public sector and governance. The second area for such opportunities would be from emerging markets as against the developed world and the third would be relatively newer fields like appliance, computing, firmware, genomics, healthcare and the digital economy.
Critical issues being faced by the knowledge and professional services industry in India today were discussed at the conference and a road map was developed to stay ahead of the global competition.
India’s 60 billion dollars outsourcing industry employs over two million people and accounts for five percent of the country’s economic output. (ANI)
