IT companies in for a sizeable offset policy business in aerospace

Bangalore, Feb 18 (UNI) Indian software companies, both major and medium, are looking forward to a sizeable chunk of business emanating out of the offset clause of the defence procurement policy with huge defence orders, spearheaded by the 126 Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMCR), in pipeline.

According to an eastimate atleast 10 billion dollars worth of offset clause business could plough to Indian companies and the matured IT sector in the country, including majors such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro besides a host of midsizes companies across the country have become natural choice for Aerospace and defence majors across the globe to either partner in development or emerge major offshore deliverers.

According to Regu Ayyaswamy, Vice President of Engineering and Industrial Services of TCS there was huge potential for the IT companies to tap the opportunities in the offset clause which stated that atleast 30 per cent of orders over Rs 300 Crore should have some domestic production or procurement.

Mr Ayyaswamy told UNI that out of the projected 10 billion dollars flow due to offset policy, the IT sector could easily garner 20 per cent, working out to two billion dollars over the next five years.

The recent Aero India 2007 saw a number of software companies being hunted by these companies either for signing Memorandum of Understanding for future business or sign contracts for development of various systems.

Companies like Wipro, TCS and the Hyderabad based Infotech have already made their mark in the field. Mr Ayyaswamy said that TCS alone had around 28 live customers across the world in the aerospace field, though the contribution by the sector was hardly two per cent of the total revenue of TCS.

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