Bangalore February 5 2013: About 30 product companies and individuals have joined hands together to form iSPIRT – the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable……to transform India into a hub for new generation software products. They held their first meeting in Bangalore on February 4.
The founders include Vishnu Dusad, Managing Director, Nucleus Software, Manav Garg CEO & Founder, EKA software, Jay Pullur Founder & CEO, Pramati Technologies, Bishal Lachhiramka CEO, Drishti Software, Anand Deshpande, Founder, CEO & MD, Persistent , Ajay Sharma Co-Founder, Srishti Software, Bharat Goenka, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Tally Solutions and Kailash Katkar, Chairman & Managing Director, QuickHeal.
They explain the reason for their initiative: “We feel that there is a need to explain to the public at large that a vibrant software product industry is vital to India’s future. Unless we do this, the appropriate policy framework will not emerge. Today very few public intellectuals understand the difference between IT Services and software products. We seek to change this over time.”“We believe that the new generation of Indian software products will have a big impact on improving government, labour, and social productivity. It will make governance more data-driven, small businesses exponentially more productive, and communities more connected.”“In India the majority of economic activity takes place in the informal sector. For the first time ever, self-employed individuals are able to use technology to become efficient and competitive. For instance, a self-employed driver can now be part of a taxi network and have access to new customers. Or a small bus operator can use RedBus and have a state of art seat management system. In fact, now any small businesses can embrace a game changing business application easily. This is creating unprecedented opportunities for individuals and smaller firms to create value in their business.”
Earlier reports in the Indian media, mostly based on a Times of India story suggested that iSPIRT was somehow a break away from NASSCOM the national body of the Indian software and services industry. This does not appear to be true. The members of the new body have not left NASSCOM. They explain: "iSpirt has a very focused agenda related only to the software product industry. It is an important agenda - we believe that software products will be instrumental in transforming India at large. We will collaborate with all other trade bodies, including Nasscom, to achieve this mission."
iSPIRT has also started a thinktank --ProductNation -- focused on Transforming India into a hub for new generation software products. It seeks to inform, educate, and initiate dialogues among key ecosystem participants. ProductNation aims to be a forum for these individuals to contribute their points of view and opinions and energize the software product industry with their passion for enhancing the product eco-system. http://productnation.in/
http://www.ispirt.in
Pl see our Image of the Day for a full list of iPSIRT founders