India has drafted a software products policy that aims to catapult it as one of the top three global IT Innovation hubs by 2025. The draft policy floated by the government will facilitate easy access to the local domestic/international market for software products, help increase India's share in global software market by 10 fold to $148 billion by 2025, and thereby create 3.5 million direct and indirect jobs.
The Indian IT industry is $143 billion strong but the total revenue of software product industry is a mere $6.1 billion, out of which $2 billion is from exports. The policy proposes a paradigm shift in its strategy for software sector by focusing on the software product industry. The draft proposes to leverage Indian Government's Start-up India initiative to ensure ease of business and to address concerns specific to the software product industry through an Inter-Ministerial Coordination Group. "The policy targets to achieve a goal of creation of 1,000,000 jobs by 2017, and additional 2,500,000 by 2025,'' it reads further.
The policy will try to synergize the efforts of the Government and the industry to create a robust industry that would be the germinating ground for software product startups, promote the development of an ecosystem encouraging R&D and innovation, opens up access to capital and helps build and improve domestic demand.
Under the policy, the Government proposes "enabling framework for inclusion of Indian software product in Government procurements" "in strategic sectors like defense, atomic energy, space, railways, telecom, power and healthcare etc".