NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave (Friday, April 30, 2010, Chennai): How SMEs can leverage domestic opportunities

- Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy, chief evangelist, YourStory

On April 30, 2010, NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave will bring together a host of speakers, eminent thinkers, panel discussions, and workshops towards a single objective: How can technology SMEs leverage the growing opportunities in India? What opportunities does the domestic market present and how big is it?

Indian software services contributed to the nation’s GDP in a big way in the past decade. Emergence of technology biggies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, and Cognizant rewrote the business landscape of the country, with dollar revenues changing the face of the economy. The brain power of Indian techies gained global prominence. A standing joke about a passer-by in a German airport asking an Indian youngster to set right his laptop provides a funny, yet fascinating account of how Indians, in particular Indian geeks, have taken centre stage. While the services were largely export-oriented for developed economies in the Americas and Europe, innovative business models like nearshoring (establishing offices close to customer locations in cost-effective centers in Africa or Caribbean) and labor arbitrage expanded the ability of Indian firms to think big and deliver. With maturity and competition from other economies, the Indian software giants entered the consulting and R&D space (KPO services), providing knowledge arbitrage benefits to their customers in the US and Europe.

The focus thus remained largely outside India. Tata Nano, the 1-lakh rupee car, is probably the tipping point for services companies in any segment to relook their strategy to serve the huge domestic market in India. Technology implementation for enhanced productivity and efficiency is driving even the governments to bring in e-governance frameworks. The Unique ID scheme is one such big project that aims to make use of technological prowess to bring enormous benefits. The emerging trends in computing like SaaS and PaaS are capable of providing scale to resource-constrained economies like India.

The NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave fulfills the gap in the aspirations of SMEs who look forward to leveraging the domestic opportunities. The automotive sector, which has a large presence in Chennai, opens up tremendous opportunities. The forerunner in the services space Tally Software has shown what is possible in the Indian context if the needs of the Indian customers are well understood. RedBus.in, founded by a young entrepreneur Phanindra Sama, has entered a road less travelled by providing technology infrastructure to bus travel in India. Again, such opportunities not only provide scope but scale given the needs of the Indian customers.

OrangeScape, the Chennai-based PaaS company, has broken into the big league, ranking among the top ten PaaS companies in the world. Using the latest trend in computing, Suresh Sambandam-led team in OrangeScape has provided innovative solutions for enterprises by simplifying the existing paradigm. If these technologies are used in the domestic market, they might convert our resource constraints into viable opportunities. Such technologies are also capable of providing solutions to huge projects that may have cost constraints.

Vijay Anand, program chair, NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave Chennai, has spoken exclusively to YourStory on entrepreneurship. He feels that India can set standards for emerging economies because what works in a big, not-so-rich economy like India is likely to work for other economies in Southeast Asia. He cites Japan’s Docomo setting standards for mobile technology within the Japanese framework. His interview will be published shortly on YourStory.

What the Conclave would do is to showcase SMEs huge domestic opportunities and crack the brains of entrepreneurs to think of scale and power by providing innovative and cost-effective technology solutions. By hearing stalwarts like Mr. Bharat Goenka, the SMEs can get some real-time lessons on how to think big in the domestic market. Mr. Lakshmi Narayanan, a thought leader in the technology space, will provide fodder to the left and right brain by pooling in thoughts on growth opportunities for SMEs.

YourStory, as the online partner, is going to fill in the space this week as a runup to the Conclave by providing more insights, interviews, and guest columns for you to get a wholesome view of the Conclave.

Don’t miss it and regret later. Please register for the conference here.