Benefiting from a boom in offshore outsourcing, India’s software and services exports are expected to grow by 33 percent to more than US$31 billion in the Indian fiscal year that ends March 31, according to data released Tuesday by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).India’s top outsourcing companies—Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro—have all reported strong revenue and profit growth for the quarter that ended Dec. 31, mainly on increased volumes of business.The country is on course to achieve $60 billion in exports by 2010, Nasscom said.IT services including software development are expected to contribute $18 billion to exports in the year that ends March 31, while business process outsourcing (BPO) and call centers are likely to contribute another $8.3 billion, according to Nasscom, in Delhi. Engineering services, research and development (R&D) services, and product development work are expected to contribute $5 billion. The data includes exports by Indian outsourcing companies, and Indian operations of multinational services and technology companies like IBM, Dell, Oracle and Accenture.The total Indian software and services industry, including sales to the domestic market, is expected to grow during the fiscal year by about 31 percent to $39.7 billion, Nasscom said. Employment in the country’s software and services sector is likely to reach 1.6 million by March 31, up from 1.28 million in the previous year, according to Nasscom.India is riding a boom in outsourcing. A report released by McKinsey & Co. and Nasscom has forecast that the country’s outsourcing industry can grow at an annual rate of more than 25 percent to generate export revenue of about $60 billion by 2010. To achieve this, however, India will have to improve the quality of education and train more staff to counter an expected shortage of 500,000 staff by 2010, according to Nasscom.The association has proposed setting up a chain of finishing schools for IT professionals to make them more employable. A three- to four-month honing of technical skills and training on “soft skills” like better communications will help bridge the gap between staff supply and demand by at least 30 percent to 40 percent, Nasscom said.-John Ribeiro, IDG News Service (Bangalore Bureau)Related Links: India Gets Creative Commons Chapter India’s Wipro Posts Strong Growth in Revenue, Profits India Nearly Doubles Mobile Phone Use in ’06Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe