There was also a huge dip in the growth of the top 20 IT exporters, growing 29 percent as against the 45 percent, recorded the year before, according to the Dataquest Indian IT Industry Survey 2008 conducted by Dataquest magazine, a publication of specialty media chain CyberMedia.
The survey result was confirmed by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the organization representing the Indian software industry. In its annual report released July 9, Nasscom reported that IT services exports increased 28.2 percent to gross $23.1 billion in 2007-08, while the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector showed an increase of 30 percent, fetching $10.9 as compared to $8.4 billion the previous fiscal.
However, the Nasscom report said the industry clocked a combined growth rate of 28.2 percent in 2007-08, as against Dataquest’s figure of 24 percent. It said the growth was expected to slow down to between 21-24 percent in the current financial year, the figure Dataquest quoted for last fiscal. “A stronger rupee adversely impacted the exports-heavy Indian IT industry in [the] financial year 2007-08 when the average value of rupee in comparison to dollar rose nine percent, with a vast majority of the IT companies still unfazed by a slowdown in the global outsourcing industry,” the Dataquest report said.
In Dataquest’s listing of the top 20 IT companies in India, the top seven positions remained unchanged, with TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HP India, IBM India, Ingram Micro and Satyam Computer Services retaining their positions in that order. Last year, foreign companies Accenture, SAP and Dell replaced three Indian firms, Teledata, Patni and Moser Baer.
“After three years of strong growth, financial year 2007-08 was a challenging year for IT companies in several ways, not least of all due to the exchange rate which meant an over 10 percent hit right away in rupee earnings for exporters,” said CyberMedia publisher Pradeep Gupta. Added Dataquest chief editor Prasanto Kumar Roy: “This uneven growth means companies that have differentiated themselves in some way, in a tough year, began to reap the benefits of that strategy.”