India can become the front-end of the web-services of the world

Updated on: Wednesday, March 20, 2013

An Indian IT veteran sees "big revolution" taking place in internet-enabled projects going forward, with the country becoming the front-end of the web-services of the world.

From the mid-1980s "when no one believed that we could do IT in India", Radha Ramaswami Basu noted that the country has come a long way with the IT-BPO sector already becoming a USD 100 billion industry.

Widely considered as a leading woman entrepreneur in hi-tech companies and a pioneer in the Indian software business, she was actively associated with Hewlett Packard's operations in India and set up one of the earliest software centres of any multinational here.

Radha said the "next phase" would be "web-service revolution". "We did it in IT-BPO and I believe we can do this with the power of rural youth and women", she told reporters here on the occasion of philathropic investment firm Omidyar Network investing in iMerit Technology Services, founded by her last year.

Noting that today internet allows work to be done from anywhere by anyone, she said people in tier-II, III and IV towns in India can be made skilled to do it.

Citing projects carried out by iMerit in villages in the North-East, Radha said she was amazed to find that rural youth and women who pass 10th and 12th standards can be skilled in three-four months to undertake web-enabled works.

In areas where women can't come out of their community, IT projects can be taken to where they live, she said.

Indian companies are also beginning to accept the idea of outsourcing to firms engaged in build-operate-manage model and operating IT centres in towns, in view of higher attrition rates in the metros, according to her.

Radha saw "next revolution in web-services" of getting any work done by anybody not just in India but the world-over, and said India can become the front-end of web-services of the world, while continuing its strides in the BPO space.

India can become the front-end of the web-services of the world

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