Focus will be on innovation, R&D, IP and creation of talent pool
The Cabinet 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 policy aims to provide a level playing field 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 entire spectrum of emerging technology such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Big Data, robotics and smart sensors for developing globally competitive software products for promising economic such as smart cities, healthcare, agriculture, e-learning, transport, fintech etc is being given special attention. For this, a dedicated Software Product Development Fund (SPDF) with a corpus of ₹5,000 crore will be created in the form of Fund of Funds with industry participation, a government statement said.
The new framework will be aligned with other government initiatives such as Start-up India, Make in India and Digital India, Skill India and many more, it said.
Currently, the total revenue of the IT-ITeS market is $168 billion (including e-commerce) whereas the software product industry in India is $7.1 billion, out of which $2.3 billion is from exports. “Through this policy intervention, the software product industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 40 per cent so as to reach $70-80 billion by 2025 and generating direct and indirect employment for 3.5 million by 2025,” a government statement said.
Some of the salient features of the policy include promoting the creation of a sustainable Indian software product industry, driven by intellectual property, leading to a ten-fold increase in share of the global software product market by 2025.
It also aims to nurture 10,000 technology start-ups in software product industry, including 1,000 such 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.
In addition, the government aims to build a cluster-based innovation driven ecosystem by developing 20 sectoral and strategically located software product development clusters having integrated ICT infrastructure, marketing, incubation, R&D/test beds and mentoring support.
[“source=thehindubusinessline”]
