An Indian Microsoft or Google is inevitable

Many fret that India has not produced anything like Microsoft's Windows or Apple's iPhone despite our acknowledged technology prowess. Our strength is seen to overwhelmingly be still in technology services.

But if we go by what we see around Bangalore today, and what we hear from visiting CEOs and CTOs of global technology companies, it's perhaps just a matter of time before India has a good presence in products globally, and may be even a huge hit like Windows to boast of.

Global CXOs are often ecstatic about India's creative capabilities. Hear this from Rebecca Parsons, CTO of global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks , when we asked her what she thought of Indian talent: "There is a tremendous talent base here. I often use our Indian office to shame some of the people at our other offices; the level of creativity and the willingness to just dive in. So many of the people I meet here in India have more of that almost startup mentality even when it comes to learning new technology. There's a willingness to do it on their own rather than thinking that, okay, we need a training class for six weeks. Oh no, just point me to the right two books and give me a sample problem and then we will see. They are very confident."

Or this from NetApp CEO Tom Georgens, when we asked what made the company choose India to have one of its biggest R&D operations: "The Indian educational system is generating a number of well trained energetic young engineers. What I love about Bangalore is that the average age of the engineer is 10 or 15 years lower than that in California. Many of them are in their first job, so they have high energy, they are eager to prove, eager to contribute, adjust. I was asked this question, what's your expectation of Bangalore, and I said I don't have any special expectations of Bangalore anymore. Earlier, it used to be, 'we need to get your productivity levels up' , 'we need to have innovations' , we need to do this, that, but now my expectation is the same as what I have of California or North Carolina."

Within global technology enterprises , the youth enthusiasm in their India centres is translating into these centres contributing the most towards potentially patentable ideas. NetApp says that in its last quarter, the India centre had the highest number of what are called new invention reports, reports that will be considered by NetApp for patent worthiness. In EMC's Innovation Conference this year, India accounted for 40% of the 1,500 innovative ideas submitted from 26 countries. These numbers, like we said, are more a reflection of the enthusiasm of India's young engineers than the quality of ideas. But as EMC pointed out, Indian ideas typically form 10-15 % of the final selected ideas, showing that India is becoming a significant force in innovations.

Such signs of successful innovation is also visible in Indian companies , though their public visibility is often low because most are focused on enterprise solutions. Tally has built an enviable accounting, and increasingly an ERP business with small enterprises in India. Subex's telecom solutions are used by 36 of the 72 biggest telecom service providers in the world, across 70 countries . Tejas Networks has 150 customers across 60 countries.

TenMiles's help desk management product has over 6,000 customers, most of them overseas. FusionCharts, which provides animated and interactive charts, graphs and maps, and about which we wrote during Nasscom's Product Conclave last year, today has 17,000 customers globally, including those like Google , Facebook, Microsoft , Intel, IBM, Dell, HP, FedEx, World Bank, Cisco and Oracle. The US government's IT dashboard that allows Americans to see where their tax money goes uses FusionCharts.

Sharad Sharma, the chairperson of the Nasscom Product Conclave, says angel and VC funding is often the big challenge for start-ups . "If we can address that, it will become a lot easier for product companies to take off," he says. Meanwhile, cloud computing is emerging as a great option for people who can't afford to spend much. Cloud computing, combined with India's growing youth enthusiasm and creativity, could deliver a host of great software products.


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