SME Times News Bureau | 27 Nov, 2014
The burgeoning Indian IT industry had over taken the
state-run public sector in job creation, Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana
Murthy said Wednesday.
"The IT industry, especially its software sector, has
over taken public sector undertakings (PSUs) as the biggest job creator in the
country, with 3.2 million employees and adding 200,000 new jobs every
year," Murthy said at a special session of the Commonwealth Science
Conference here.
Noting IT bellwethers such as Tata Consultancy Services,
Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro provided not only high quality jobs, but also
higher disposable incomes than other companies in the country, Murthy told
about 800 delegates that the Indian IT industry had emerged in the services
sector as China had in the manufacturing sector as the factory of the world.
"Huge employment in the software sector has fuelled the
economy in many ways, as our techies are able to buy a car, build a home, go
shopping in malls or eat in a restaurant and even go on vacation more
often," Murthy said while sharing his vision on "Entrepreneurship and
Innovation in India" at a special session on the second day of the
four-day summit.
Asserting that the IT industry ecosystem created three
indirect jobs for every direct job with spin-offs in the secondary and tertiary
sectors of the economy, the former Infosys chairman said the software sector
had put India on the global map and boosted its image in the world over.
The industry's representative body Nasscom has projected
14-15 percent growth in IT exports to $99 billion this fiscal (2014-15) from
$86 billion last fiscal.
Murthy, however, projected that the Indian software industry
would grow 12-14 percent per annum over the next five years.
"The IT industry has brought a new confidence, a new
mindset and a new paradigm in Indian business," he noted.