Nasscom to restructure itself into 7 verticals

Indian IT premier body Nasscom on Monday said that it plans to restructure to specific verticals and enablers as suggested by the independent expert committee chaired by Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy.

 The committee was set up in July 2012 to address the key needs of the industry in order to help realise Nasscom’s goal of reaching $300 billion by 2020. Other committee members included Mindtree’s Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rajan Anandan of Google; Pramod Bhasin of Genpact, among others.

 The panel has recommended restructuring into seven verticals comprising IT Services, business process management (BPM), global in-house centres (GICs), ER&D, Internet & mobile, products and domestic market. The recommendation would be implemented in a phased manner.

 “Indian IT industry has not been addressing the entire market, nevertheless it is expanding. We are at a crucial stage where technology is continuously evolving at a pretty remarkable page and this is the time to focus on the recommendations,” TCS CEO and Nasscom Chairman N Chandrasekaran said.

 The committee has also recommended that the Executive Council (EC) be reconstituted to have adequate representation for the seven identified priority verticals.

 “It is worthwhile to aspire to be $300 billion sector by 2020 and we figured out that we would have to focus on other opportunities also. We have to focus more on the domestic market to help people realise the benefits of IT and technology,” Murthy said.

 Nasscom, which has 1,303 members among 5,000 companies, plans to add 3,000 new members in the next five years. It would also set up five centres of excellence in five years for software engineering, emerging technologies, vertical solutions, e-commerce, service excellence and governance.

 Broadly the seven pivotal initiatives highlighted in the report to help achieve the goal by 2020 are - expanding focus on industry segments based on size and potent; to help develop capabilities in next generation technologies with industry partnership; position India as an innovative solutions provider; build new markets and customer segments; emphasise skill development and domain and build entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.

 Recent reports suggest that Nasscom has been facing problems with regard to staying relevant for the IT industry since it was set up in the late ‘80s. Some Nasscom members have even formed a separate policy think tank iSpirit.