India Government on Thursday approved the National Policy on Software Products-2019 (NPSP-2019) that aims to stimulate an alternative growth of revenues from software in parallel to the IT-ITeS industry.
The software policy aims to provide a strong platform to Indian software product companies, facilitate ease of doing business, create an enabling environment for innovation, R&D and IP creation & protection, create talent pool for the industry and tap global and domestic software product market.
The policy will also help promote emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Big Data, robotics and smart sensors for developing globally competitive software products for as smart cities, healthcare, agriculture, e-learning, transport, fintech etc is being given special attention.
India will create a dedicated Software Product Development Fund (SPDF) with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore in the form of Fund of Funds with industry participation.
The National Policy on Software Products 2019 is a positive step towards empowering India to become global software products hub, software industry association NASSCOM said.
The revenue of the IT-ITeS market including e-commerce $168 billion whereas the software product industry in India is $7.1 billion, out of which $2.3 billion is from exports.
The software product industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 40 percent to $70-80 billion by 2025 and generating direct and indirect employment for 3.5 million by 2025, a government statement said.
The policy aims to nurture 10,000 technology start-ups in software product industry, including 1,000 technology start-ups in Tier-II and Tier-III towns and cities.
It will also focus on creating a talent pool for software product industry through up-skilling of 10 lakh IT professionals, motivating 1 lakh school and college students and specialise 10,000 professionals that can provide leadership.
India aims to build a cluster-based innovation-driven ecosystem by developing 20 software product development clusters with integrated ICT infrastructure, marketing, incubation, R&D/test beds and mentoring support.
