DailyPost 312
IS PRODUCT A RETURN ON INVESTMENT?
Trump, recession & cloud in unison are working to the detriment of the Indian IT industry. The return on investment is a well established concept & practice followed in general by business establishments. If this indicator is positive, the business would remain fine & upward. That might necessarily, not be true, even when all seems well, your business may still be heading for an impending disaster. While the world has been calculating the return on research & development by way of product created, Indian IT industry has always been wary of treating product as a return on investment.
The onset of IT had created an one of its kind market. From product to services to maintenance, all had their field day. There was enough for everyone with rates unchallenged & a halo attached to IT industry itself. With land, facilities & tax exemptions laid on the platter, there were on losers. Body shopping which was an art to start with was perfected as a science. While small customer oriented product development happened, the Indian IT giants didn’t bother to use these resources for further development.
Since times immemorial businesses have thrived on products. A one off business model got created because of price advantage, cheap manpower, growing IT usage in all sectors. Outside product & Indian maintenance became the mantra. Surprising, even quality hardware created out assembling known and available components made no headway, may it be a PC or a laptop etc.
With the first mover advantage & ever ringing cash registers at their command, product development was presumed to be the natural choice. It didn’t happen. Every business model has a life cycle. Product is the ultimate return on investment, giving the country both an competitive business edge & also the luxury of having our own products, hardware & software, saving us from the sleepless nights, we have on account of Cyber breaches.
A PRODUCT IS THE ONLY & ULTIMATE RETURN ON HUMAN & CAPITAL INVESTMENT.
Sanjay Sahay