Building leadership, capabilities in big data labs critical for analytic: Nasscom

With growing new technologies creating huge mountain of data, it is critical to build its leadership and capabilities in big data laboratories for analytics, said R Chandrashekhar, president, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).

He was speaking about the growth and prospects of Global In-house Centres (GIC), which are captive IT centres of global companies in India.

Speaking to reporters at the Nasscom GIC 2015 conference, he said that one of the fast growing new area is the big data, considering the use of all the new technologies which deal with each and every individual customer leading to mountains of data and this will become even more so as you move into internet of things where everything gets connected.

Then it will be even further huge because there is machine to machine (M2M) communication and lots of communication will happen without human intervention.

“To make sense out of these mountains of data, big data laboratories and the analytics on that becomes important. This is the fastest growing area in the Indian IT industry. I think it is critical for us to build our leadership and capabilities in that space,” he said.

He added that the Nasscom itself is looking at setting up some Centre of Excellence in collaboration with some of the companies and the department and some of them are expected to start this year itself. “We are exploring five centres of excellence in internet of things to come up,” he added.

He said that the start up ecosystem in the country, which is booming, is one of the factorts that attracts the MNCs to have their inhouse center in India. For most of the MNCs, India centre is their largest GIC outside their own headquarters. 35% of the technology workforce of many of the leading MNCs is working out of the India centre, he added.

The number of GICs in the country has grown significantly in the last five years, he said. The number of GICs in 2010 was around 750, which has grown up to over 1,000 now. The GICs had its stronghold in engineering research and software development (ER&D), in which it had a share of 59%.

The GICs revenue in India has seen a growth of 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and currently has total revenue of $19.4 billion. The total employee strength of GICs has also increased at a CAGR of 14% to reach 7,45,000. GICs today account for about a fifth of India’s IT exports, he added.

The player landscape in GIC is seeing an increasing number of smaller firms enter the market resulting in India emerging as the hotbed for ER&D and product development, he said. Around 300 firms offering ER&D and product development services, particularly in emerging technologies of Internet of Things, robotics, wearable devices, 3D printing etc.

GICs are building capabilities in India to enable digital transformation of their global enterprises. Availability of talent with high skills combined with understanding of the domain make India an attractive location for the MNCs to look at.

Over a period of time, the distinction between GIC and non GIC companies are diminishing and more collaborative activities are taking place, said Shakti Sagar, chair of Nasscom GIC Council.

During the year 2015-16, the country would see more penetration of the IT industry into the tier II, III markets. He said that transfer pricing was one of the major issues which had its effect on the GICs, however it is getting addressed and the industry is positive on the growth.