Software industry body Nasscom today announced setting up of a ‘product council’ to help develop the product ecosystem in India.
The council will focus on a six pillar engagement to enhance branding, market access, benchmarking, corporate connect, product design and enablement of product solutions in India, Nasscom said in a statement.
“I believe that product companies and start-ups are the next growth engines for the industry and will contribute significantly in realising the vision outlined for the industry,” Nasscom Chairman Krishnakumar Natarajan said.
The formation of Product Council comes about three months after some member software product firms formed a policy think tank ‘iSpirt’
iSpirt’s (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table) goal is to help members engage with each other and encourage the right policy environment to help industry scale faster.
Nasscom’s Product Council envisions establishing the Indian software product ecosystem as a world class source of high value, innovative, next generation products which are enjoying robust sales traction in both domestic and international markets.
Ravi Gururaj, Chairman and Co—Founder, Frictionless Ventures has been appointed as Chairperson of the Council, while other members include Eka Software CEO Manav Garg, Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham, Indix’s Sanjay Parthasarthy, Impel CEO Kishore Mandyam, Infrasoft’s Hanuman Tripathi and Robosoft MD and CEO Rohith Bhat.
In March this year, Nasscom Expert Committee chaired by N R Narayana Murthy shared key recommendations to address challenges and needs of the industry and identified the products segment as a key propeller.
There are over 2,400 software product firms in India and the revenues from Indian products stood at $2.2 billion in FY2013.
The total market opportunity in software products for Indian companies, comprising exports and the domestic market, is estimated to be $10 billion by 2020.
Nasscom has also announced a partnership with Frost & Sullivan to build a Product Excellence Framework that will benchmark Indian software products across defined categories.
This will enable access to market insights, competitive positioning and case studies that can be shared with customers for adoption of Indian software products, it said.