INDIA'S SOFTWARE DREAM RUN IS FAR FROM OVER
The Hindu Business Line 

It's a lament one often hears nowadays: Indian software programmers, those global icons of cheap brainpower, have become greedy. 

With compensation costs in the Indian software industry climbing 12.5 percent annually the past two years, some investors are now concerned about how long the country can hold on to its most promising industry. 

“If salaries continue to escalate,'' Promod Haque, managing partner of Palo Alto, California-based Norwest Venture Partners, recently said, “China is more attractive to us as venture capitalists, Israel is more attractive to us, and Eastern Europe is more attractive to us.” 

That's perhaps too gloomy a view. India is far too ahead in the game to face a serious challenge any time soon. Out of the $40 billion of software ``outsourced'' globally last year, 44 percent went to India. China and Eastern Europe got less than 5 percent each, according to statistics reported this month by India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom. 

“With so much research and development and engineering design, wages may not be a problem,'' says S. Sadagopan, director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, ``as long as productivity and the value of work done are high.'' 

According to Nasscom's statistics, the 697,000 people employed in the Indian software industry had an average revenue productivity of about $23,000 in the 12 months ended March 31, a 7 percent increase from a year earlier.