DailyPost 259
INDIAN IT BUSINESS MODEL
From HP & IBM to Intel and to the recent flurry in the IT age, beginning from Microsoft to Google and the recent avatars of the likes of Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook and the latest entrant WhatsApp, every business entity had a different business growth model & growth, some generic similarities notwithstanding. The Oracles and the SAPs have their own story. The Indian IT industry in sharp contrast is conspicuous by its similarity, a standard services based business model, might be a linear progression of lots of thing we did in the physical world. Nonetheless, it had a market & lots of Indian companies did exceedingly, put us on the software world map, while providing IT services.
Unfortunately, in the fast paced digital age, everything has an expiry date. From patch management to newer versions of software, to more sophisticated hardware to processors are all indicative & also the result of the same story. The Indian IT industry did not respond to this trend & today it’s on the verge of the most difficult times, the industry has experienced in its history. Given the global trends for quite sometime, only reinvention can help. Doing more of the same thing & trying to cut costs in the process might not be successful this time. The challenge itself is different.
Some models have come to stay, the Google one of being in the top through R&D ; a portfolio of related & meaningful product based services, the marketplace phenomenon of Amazons & Alibabas have changed the concept of market itself, aggregation software with services on it gave birth to successful companies like Uber, Airbnb, Booking.com & lots are expected in the genre ; the cloud services is hotting up, may it be Amazon , Microsoft etc; this technology is deciding the fate of IT.
There is no company on the global stage, competitive & futuristic, being limited to services of the nature our IT giants are. Innovation on technology is the key. There can be different solutions but present trajectory does not seem to the answer.
TO INNOVATE IS TO LIVE; TO LIVE IS TO INNOVATE, IS THE WAY AHEAD.
Sanjay Sahay