Bigger India
A challenging year for Indian IT and things may get worse before getting better
It was one of the most challenging years for the $154 billion Indian IT sector that employs about 4 million people. IT exports soared 20-fold in the last 17 years to $108 billion but 2017 saw some difficult times for the industry and exports are projected to grow by a mere 7-8 per cent.
For years, Indian IT had been talking of the shift to digital and 2017 was the year when the real impact on companies was both seen and felt. Except for a few companies Indian IT was caught napping and tried playing catch-up. Large number of routine IT tasks got automated. Indian companies accelerated their push to provide platforms based on artificial intelligence. While what exactly constitutes digital was still hotly contested, traditional IT services declined and new generation of offerings broadly under the SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) category grew.