By NNN-Bernama
New Delhi : After a long association with the American market, Indian information technology (IT) giants are now veering towards Asia to double their computer hardware and software exports.
India’s Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council chairman, Sanjiv Narayan, said India wants to reduce its over-dependence on America, which accounts for over 60 percent of the total Indian exports.
“Basically, we are looking at diversifying the market portfolios which largely had been focused on the US. We want to expand to newer markets in Asia, the Far East and the Middle East.
“There are lots of opportunities (in Asia). We are looking at expanding the Asian market share from the current 10 percent to about 15 percent in the next three years,” Narayan told Bernama.
India’s red-hot economy had largely been propelled by the robust IT sector where about 4,500 established IT companies export products worth US$37 billion (US$1=RM3.36) overseas markets, and plans to double the figure by 2010.
Asian economic powerhouses like Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, which has a healthy demand for IT products are certainly on India’s list and the council forecast India’s IT industry itself to grow by 30 percent annually.
“Japan is having US$30 billion market but we are only doing US$2 billion and we will focus more on Japan and Hong Kong. Hong Kong is becoming an outsourcing hub and many companies are going there and also to China,” said Narayan.
Amid growing competition in the sector and perceived odds against the outsourcing industry, a main driver of the Indian IT sector, and the strengthening of the rupee against the dollar, Indian companies are now looking at Asia for the future.