IT industry grows by 33 pc

NEW DELHI, JULY 15: The Information Technology (IT) industry in India has registered a growth rate of 33 per cent at Rs 23,955 crore in t...

NEW DELHI, JULY 15: The Information Technology (IT) industry in India has registered a growth rate of 33 per cent at Rs 23,955 crore in the last fiscal from Rs 18,015 in 1997-98 and the total exports revenue crossed the Rs 10,000 crore mark despite economic recessions in the region.

According to a Dataquest survey (DQ top 20) released here, the growth in the sector was fuelled by the domestic segment’s performance of 21.8 per cent to touch Rs 13,204 crore and the exports segment including the hardware and software industry which grew by about 50 per cent at Rs 10,000 crore in 1998-99.

The software exports posted a 70 per cent jump to touch Rs 10,148 crore up from Rs 5,974 crore in 1997-98 while that from hardware was minimal. The hardware component in the domestic market has witnessed a relative decrease in its share and it was on account of negative growth in the Unix segment and price cuts in the personal computer (PC) market, the survey said.

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Though the PC segment grew at 31.8 per cent in unit termsto reach 8,24,535 in 1998-99 but by value the growth has been a meagre 11 per cent rise to record Rs 3070 crore growth.

Meanwhile, desktops grew by 32.4 per cent to touch 774,745 in unit terms and 7 per cent in value, the annual survey by the computer magazine published by the Cyber media said.

According to the survey findings, it was the service component that was helping the industry keep in pace with the trends and has been increasing its market share from 25 per cent in 1994-95 to 33 per cent in the last fiscal.

In the training segment, the enrollment touched a million and market grew by 39.4 per cent to touch Rs 1,193 crore up from Rs 856 crore in the corresponding period of last fiscal. In terms of sector-wise buying, the government buying showed a resurgence by actually doubling from the last fiscal. In 1997-98 the share was at 8 per cent and it recorded a 19.5 per cent in 1998-99.

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In vertical market segment, export continued to dominate the IT market with a 44.2 per cent share, a rise of 4.3per cent from the 39.9 per cent mark set in the similar period last year.

However, manufacturing lost ground as its share came down crashing to 9.7 per cent from 14.6 per cent in the 1997-98 period.