Indian IT industry could see upturn next year: Chandrashekhar

Hyderabad: India's IT industry could see an upturn next year as the process of investments in technology, particularly in the United States, has started to gather momentum, says a senior official.

The industry is on track to posting 7-8 per cent growth in exports in the current fiscal and there is no case for revisiting those numbers as no new factor has emerged, said software services body Nasscom's president, R Chandrashekhar.

The export growth projection for 2017-18 had taken into account "all the changes in technology, global economics and global politics including political protectionism," he said.

"We believe we are on the same track (to achieve 7 to 8 per cent export growth for the Indian IT industry as a whole). We don't see any need for any major change at this point. We believe, that is the range we will be in," Chandrashekhar told PTI.

"We don't see a case for revisiting those numbers. The important thing is: no new factors have come up which warrants reconsideration. Whatever factors are there are all known factors, all these were taken into consideration when we made the projection," he said.

"Also, we believe that the coming year could actually witness an upturn in the industry largely based on global economic trends, US trends in particular," the official said.

He said as per "most commentators and analysts", for the last year or two, a lot of investments in technology had been deferred because of political and technological uncertainties, and "nobody wanted to take a big bet at that time".

"Now, I think those uncertainties have either been resolved or that level of uncertainty has now stabilised and we know that this uncertainty is going to continue for a long time," he said.

The process of investing in technology has sort of started picking up and this trend is actually expected to really consolidate in 2018, Chandrashekhar said.

He said there are expectations of an upturn in BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) segment in the US, greater investment in technology in that space and hardening of interest rates. The US accounts for more than 60 per cent of Indian IT exports, and the BFSI segment accounts for a big chunk of that.

So, these factors make Nasscom believe that "we will be seeing an upturn in the year ahead," he said.

"That's what it looks like at the moment," Chandrashekhar said, when asked if next year would be better than the current one for the industry.