Bullish on growth of Indian software industry, technology czar N R Narayana Murthy equated India’s success in this space with China’s emergence as ‘the factory of the world’.
He also said that software industry has overtaken PSUs as biggest job creator in the country with about 32 lakh-strong workforce and further addition of two lakh new jobs a year.
“Today TCS, Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro add more high quality and more highly disposable income based jobs in India than any other company has done in the last hundred years,” said Murthy, who had founded Infosys with five others in 1981.
“The software industry in India employs about 3.2 million professionals and adds about 2,00,000 jobs every year. Therefore this industry has replaced the public sector as the largest creator of jobs,” Murthy said at the Commonwealth Science Conference here.
He recently stepped down as Non-executive Chairman of Infosys, known as the bellwether of Indian IT industry.
“Such jobs have stimulated the Indian economy in a significant manner; our youngsters buy vehicle, they buy home, they go on vacation, they shop in super markets and they go to restaurant.
“It is estimated that this industry creates three jobs in secondary and tertiary sectors of our economy for every direct job that has been created by this industry,” he added.
Murthy said the software industry has boosted the international image of India like no other sector.
“...Wherever you go in the developed world there is a new respect for India thanks to the Indian software industry. India has gained reputation as the software development centre of the world much like China’s reputation as the factory of the world.
“Many influential authors all over the world have told me that our industry is an important reason for India being bracketed with the enormously successful China,” Murthy said.
He also said the software industry is expected to grow between 12 and 14 per cent during the next five years.
“... this is the only industry from India that has introduced innovation in the developed market, no other company from India has contributed some thing like this to the developed market,” he added.