Make India global powerhouse for software products: IT minister to industry

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday exhorted the IT industry to leverage existing policies and the enabling ecosystem to position the country as a global powerhouse for software products by building innovative Made-in-India offerings.

Citing the "extraordinary response" to grand challenges including developing of indigenous video conference solutions and apps, Prasad said that even amid economic challenges and hardships in the backdrop of COVID-19, significant investments have flowed into IT and communications sector, as the "the world trusted India".

"COVID was projected as an area of economic stress but even in these times of economic challenge and hard life, the world trusted India...so the brightest investments in IT and communications we got during this period," the IT minister said.

Announcing the winners of 'grand challenge for developing video conference solution', the minister also said that India which has already proven its prowess in software services should also strive to become a hub for software products.

"The world is looking at India in a big way. I would like innovators to think about that...We have already come out with a software product policy and an encouraging ecosystem is in place...I would urge the software community to leverage India's position of innovation and startups and make it a big hub of software products," Prasad said.

Vconsol, a product of Alappuzha (Kerala) based Techgentsia Software Technologies emerged as the winner in the grand challenge for developing video conference solution.

"The winner of the challenge will be provided financial support of Rs 1 crore with additional Rs 10 lakhs towards O&M (operation and maintenance) for next three years and will be adopted for use by government through a contract," an official release said.

In addition, the jury has also selected products developed by three applicants (Sarv Webs, PeopleLink Unified Communications, InstriveSoftlabs) as potential products and decided to offer a developmental contract to be supported by Rs 25 lakh each for further maturing their product in three months, the release added.

"It has also been recommended that all four products will be hosted on National Informatics Centre (NIC) cloud and NIC will facilitate for adoption of these products for government use through GeM," the release said and added that all teams will also be free to market the product globally.