Manpower, infrastructure main hurdles for IT sector: Nilekani

New Delhi, Sep 7 (UNI) Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies CEO Nandan Nilekani has said that difficulties in continued access to qualified manpower, and the lack of a modern infrastructure would be the main hurdles to the growth of India's IT industry in a rapidly globalising world.

Talking to a group of editors on the ''Business Implications of a Flattening World'' here last night, Mr Nilekani admitted that the ''system'' in India had done a lot to churn out qualified manpower year after year but clearly more needed to be done by both the government and the private sector in this crucial area.

He said Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) would account for about 10 million jobs in India by the end of this decade and was confident that the country would become the ''centre of gravity'' in the world in these sectors.

Detailing the dramatic changes taking place in the world because of accelerated technological innovations, Mr Nilekani said Indian companies would have to become leaner and nimbler to take full advantages of the new opportunities being thrown up.

According to him, India was happily placed in this regard at a time when populations in Europe and Japan were ageing fast. India also had major demographic advantages over China, which had implemented the one-child norm, he pointed out.

Mr Nilekani said Western firms were outsourcing to India not just because of cost advantages. More often than not, they did this because qualified manpower was not available in their countries, he said.

The Infosys CEO said digitisation and convergence had today led to a situation where companies whose paths never crossed in the past were today competing for the same customers.

At the same time, the acceleration of the pace of innovations had led to improved access and affordability, which, in turn, had dramatically increased the market size for various products and services. Transaction costs had gone down while transaction volumes had gone up in a big way, he pointed out.

Citing the example of Walmart, he said companies would have to learn to manage information better and turn it into an asset rather than a cost. Customers would have to be made partners in innovation, he stressed.

On infrastructure bottlenecks in India, Mr Nilekani was confident that the proposed Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in different parts of India would address this issue to a large extent.

He said the IT boom and growth in the other sectors in India had set off urban processes never seen before in the country.

Earlier, poor people from the rural areas migrated to the cities for jobs but, because of their limited means, did not make much demands on the urban infrastructure.

''Today, a 27-year-old engineer moves into Bangalore, he can afford to buy an apartment and a car,'' he said.

In his view, the SEZs would go a long way in meeting the need for modern, high quality urban infrastructure in India.

Mr Nilekani said the 10 million jobs that the IT and BPO sectors would help create were still less than 20 per cent of the 70 million jobs that India needed to generate by 2010. He said IT exports from India would touch 50 to 60 billion dollars by next year.

UNI SA RA KP1825 .