The country’s software and IT-enabled services sector is set to miss its 2010 target of getting $60 billion in exports by three to four quarters on account of the global economic crisis, but is sitting on a potential opportunity to treble exports from current levels by the year 2020, global consulting firm McKinsey and Co has said.
McKinsey & Co has been working with the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) in working out strategies and opportunities for the country, and had set a $50 billion aspirational target for 2008 in 1998, when India’s exports were only around $2 billion.
“The industry has had an unparalleled impact on the Indian economy,” McKinsey director Noshir Kaka told journalists, while observing that the 2008 target set a decade ago had been largely achieved. India is estimated to have closed the 2008-09 fiscal year with IT and IT-based exports of around $47 billion — within nodding distance from the aspirational target despite the fact that the world is in the grip of an economic slowdown.