New Year, New Opportunities!

S. Mohini Ratna,
Editor - VARIndia

Even the prophets of doom are now veering round to the view that 2012 will be a banner year for ICT in India. The reason is not far to seek.

Every New Year brings New Opportunities. 2012 will be observed as an e-governance year and all tax-related activities will be computerized. The Empowered Committee of the State Finance Ministers has decided to computerize their operations to prevent tax evasion, enhance tax collection and evade corruption pervasive in the system. The States have agreed to implement initiatives like e-return, e-registration and e-payment, among others, as was done by their commercial taxes departments to enhance their revenue.

The growth of Indian IT companies may not be high. The spending on IT products and services is expected to reach US$3.8 trillion, which is just 3.7-per cent rise from the last year. This is due to the faltering global economic growth, the Euro zone crisis and the impact of Thailand's floods on hard-disk drive (HDD) production. All these have taken their toll on the outlook for IT spending. Even though large PC OEMs will see fewer problems than others in the industry, it is really a challenge and an opportunity for the large industry leaders in our country to think for setting for an alternate production house for the HDD with all ancillary unit facility.

The Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious plan to make the gigantic task of making rural connectivity in India a grand success. Taking a step in the direction, a new company by the name National Opti-Fiber Network (NOFM), with a corpus of Rs.20,000 crore, has been created to provide connectivity to the rural population of India. In addition to this, PSUs like BSNL, RailTel and PGCIL have their specific targets. As a corollary, the potential and stakes are high in the industry.

So, there is  huge opportunity  and ever-changing world will witness where technology-led business innovations are gaining momentum, and that becomes more critical than ever before to accelerate business growth and reduce operational costs while dealing with an increase in demand by the workforce . Another important segment is payment. Payment is the backbone of the e-commerce industry. Indian e-commerce is in its second stage of expansion. There are very few players in the payment business. We don't have enough companies to cater to all segments of the e-commerce industry such as online retail, ticketing, bill payments, insurance, call centres and travel across B2C and B2B ecosystems.

Similarly, loyalty management is another growing segment in the Indian consumer business sector. How do you retain your customer and how do you ensure better customer experience and rewards programmes for continued business from the customer?

Another area of interest is how the aam admi may soon be able to hold the administration to a timeframe for service delivery and seek redress against delays, with the Centre initiating the process to evolve a Citizen's Charter.

I must say think global and act locally.