New Delhi, Mar 14: India's software products and services are being showcased at the ongoing Cebit 2003 at Hanover, mainly to identify synergies and encourage alliances with German companies.
Reiterating Europe's potential as a growing market for Indian IT exports, NASSCOM, the apex industry association of IT software and service companies in India, is leading the tenth delegation to Cebit 2003 which began Wednesday and would end on March 19.
Speaking on India's participation at Cebit, Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom, said, Germany is the third largest economy after US and Japan and is the largest and fastest growing market for IT services and products. The IT services market for Germany is expected to reach 40 billion dollars by 2005 and offers a huge export potential of 1 billion dollars by 2008.
At Cebit 2003, Indian and European companies can look forward to building strategic alliances, entering into joint ventures and conducting joint product development in the areas of emerging technologies such as telecom software, wireless internet, IT services, application service providers, systems-on-chip, microelectronics designing, CAD/CAM, e-commerce and e-banking solutions, Karnik said.

The Indian pavilion at Cebit 2003 is being coordinated and led by Nasscom with the support from the ministry of communication and information technology and Indo German export promotion project (IGEP).



Some of the leading Indian companies exhibiting their products and solutions at Cebit include B2B technologies, Cygnus Software Pvt. Ltd, Hexaware Technologies, Intersoft, Ivega Corporation Pvt Ltd and Nucleus Software Exports Ltd.



The Andhra Pradesh government is also participating at the Indian pavilion at Cebit 2003.



Over the last five years, Indian companies have aggressively looked at expanding their presence in the European market. Europe's share of software exports from India has increased from 4 per cent to 21 per cent during the last 6 years and estimates indicate that in 2002-03, India software and services exports to Western Europe may touch 2 billion dollars. Exports from India to Germany have increased from 95 million dollars in 1998-99 to almost 200 million dollars in 2000-01.


Bureau Report