SaaS companies get big boost from National Policy on Software Products

The newly unveiled National Policy on Software Products (NPSP) has given a boost to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies in India with an access to the Government eMarketplace (GeM), the national public procurement portal.

At a roundtable organised by iSPIRT in Chennai on Wednesday, which included Rajiv Kumar, Joint Secretary in-charge of NPSP 2019 and senior director Dr A K Garg, it was decided that NPSP 2019 will create a National Software Product Registry.

Here, SaaS companies can register and have access to GEM portal. Also, the procurement process will be suitably amended to allow government departments to procure and use SaaS products.

Also read: Government unveils new national policy on software products

This was the outcome following meeting between the government officials and SaaS where the former was seeking industry feedback on the new policy. Further, the National Software Product Mission envisaged in the policy will be set up at Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).

The roundtable was to facilitate officials in having direct interaction with SaaS industry and understand their issues, problems, and opportunities. This also enables government to further carve out schemes/ programmes under NPSP 2019 going further.

There were 20 SaaS companies at the event. Speaking on behalf of founders, Suresh Sambandam, Founder and CEO of OrangeScape, said,

”Global landscape has changed very fast driven by new technology. We have a $1 trillion opportunity for SaaS industry. If we get our act right, India can aspire to remain in global game in software industry”.

The government launched NPSP 2019 to focus on software product ecosystem. iSPIRT has been advocating the cause of SaaS segment in software products and its importance for India to remain a force to reckon with in software in next 25 years.

The policy will incentivise the indigenous Software product industry. It has set a goal for 10,000 software product startups, Software Product Development Fund (SPDF) with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore and provision a budget outlay 500 crore to boost R&D. Policy will take measures to boost international trade in software products.

Also read: These SaaS startups look to follow in the footsteps of freshly-minted unicorn Freshworks