ADVERTISEMENT

Modi’s Digital Ambitions Can Enrich Tech Underdogs

Small IT players will benefit more from increased IT spending, said Ganesh Ramamoorthy, vice president at Gartner.



Employees sit working in the library of the Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS) campus in  Chennai, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)
Employees sit working in the library of the Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS) campus in Chennai, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

The Indian government’s thrust on improving the country’s digital infrastructure may benefit smaller software and technology services players more due to their quick-moving nature, according to Ganesh Ramamoorthy of research and advisory firm Gartner Inc.

“There's a wind in the government space and public sector organisations that they would like their suppliers to be more agile, nimble and flexible,” Ramamoorthy told BloombergQuint in an interaction. “This is something the large IT players have struggled to do,” he added.

Ramamoorthy’s views are driven by Gartner’s expectation that IT spending in the Indian government sector will rise 8.9 percent to $8.5 billion in 2018. Gartner said that the policy framework of several intiatives of the Modi administration like Make in India, Startup India and Skill India hinge on higher IT spending in the near future.

The key driver, however, would be the Digital India initiative, Gartner said in a media statement. Launched in 2015, the Digital India campaign is aimed at connecting rural areas with high speed internet, improving delivery of government services through digital platforms, and envisages citizen engagement in policy making through e-governance.

Ramamoorthy expects the Digital India programme to drive the government’s IT spending growth over the next five years.

Modi’s Digital Ambitions Can Enrich Tech Underdogs

IT spending in India may also be boosted as enterprises renew their core infrastructure and adopt new technologies such as big data analytics, cloud computing, internet of things integration and mobility, Ramamoorthy added.

Watch the full interview here.