THE SOFTWARE BOOM FROM BYTES TO BILLIONS

From a $100-million fledgling in 1991 to a $250-billion powerhouse today, India's IT industry capitalised on visionary policies, pioneering companies and the Y2K opportunity to become a global leader in outsourcing and innovation

- BY AJAY SUKUMARAN

Hard data would be sufficient to illustrate the success of India's software industry, but IT veterans recall an anecdote that captures the incredulity of how it all unfolded. Some time in 1991, when IT was a fledgling export industry of about $100 million, N. Vittal, who was then secretary of the Department of Electronics, egged on the honchos assembled at a convention of the Computer Society of India in Bengaluru to strive for exports of $400 million in the following year, in return for policy tweaks. To the sceptical gathering, Vittal narrated an Akbar-Birbal tale—in an irritable mood, the emperor had ordered Birbal to be put to death but the quick-thinking poet wangled a year's reprieve by promising to make Akbar's horse fly. His logic was apparently this: one of three events could happen in a year. Either the emperor could die, or Birbal himself, or perhaps, the horse would fly! Vittal's analogy, as it turned out, was prescient and IT exports did soar.