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March - 2014 issue

Where is the Indian Product Revolution?

By Vignesh Anantharaj

We all witnessed WhatsApp being sold to Facebook for a whopping one lakh crores (1, 14,000 crores to be precise). This event, apart from showcasing the true potential of social media, also makes one mull over where is India’s WhatsApp? Or where is India’s Google? This ultimately leads us to the evergreen argument on Indian IT- "Where is the Indian Product Revolution?" The answer lies in utilizing the SMAC phenomenon to its maximum potential.
Although India has rode the IT services wave for the past two decades and built the same into a $100 billion industry, the flipside is that our nation missed out on developing software products that could have differentiated the largest democracy from other global technology competitors. However, research indicating that India will export $15 billion worth of SMAC software and services in fiscal 2017, gives us the opportunity to transform India into the base for Innovation and place the nation as a force to reckon with in the product space.
It is not wrong to say that there are two major problems that hinder our growth in products, Firstly, the venture capital ecosystem’s mindset towards quick returns, secondly, the government not doing enough in Technology R & D. While Research and Development Expenditure (percent of GDP) in India stands at 0.8 percent, it is in stark contrast to the US, Whose R&D GDP stands at 2.91 percent.

However, it is of utmost importance to stop playing the blame game and be the change. It is up to the enterprise community in India to believe that products are the way towards making India the next superpower and the time to strategize towards the same is now.

Also in this edition we have recognized the 20 most Promising Networking and Security Providers and the 10 most promising Networking and Security implementation partners. We have identified these companies for their expertise in rationale, deployment types, and technical approaches to provide the best of breed solutions in Networking and we are sure you would agree to the same.