In my opinion India’s biggest weakness would be in the area of telecommunication infrastructure. India’s telecommunication infrastructure is poor compared even to other developing countries. The reason behind this has been the state monopoly over telecommunication in India.

Posted by Neha Sharma

In order to really understand why India cannot produce software, you have to stand under the St Paul’s Cathedral on a clear full moon night.
It is about architecture, about creating things that will outlast trivialities and flux, so that lesser mortals will come and stare at it. It is built with a lot of money and patrons (not business managers), and impressive skillsets that range from plumbing to structural mechanics. It is not built by corporate pygmies with a 3-month analyst forecast.

It is built by people who think that a single misplaced brick on a paved road ought to be removed and made to fit with the whole, so that the whole city is aesthetic.

It is also built by developers who stare at the screen till their eyes water, solving problems because they think such things are important for reasons other than money, such as national pride.

Such a force cannot come from the comfort zone of urban India. It cannot come from people who cannot be held to their words or numbers.
Weakness as seen by others: Too much promise, lots of talk and powerpoint, too little achievement. Only the Indian railways ticket booking app has requisite capacity and achievement, on a Tomcat 4.x servlet engine. Kudos to the guys who did the back-end (now most are in US, I suppose).

Weakness that needs to be avoided: Basically short-term greed. Out of 16$/hr, you can only spare maybe about $1 for “management stuff”, about $8 has to go into “technology”. The reverse is true, because it was somehow important to put the powerpoint first and the code second.

Weakness that can be improved: Sure, get a bunch of small-town guys who cannot speak English well but have the fire, ask them to make something that is very very local, from beginning till end, with no foreign hand-holding at all. Just maybe a dozen of these per company, and everyone will get their act in place. Make it free, dears, software is meant to be free.
Posted by Kinshuk Adhikary

Good thanks for the clarification as India’s domestic market vs export market used to get compared similar to India vs. Bharat (I mean the rural India) situation. But I see some positive changes recently, showing some early signs of maturity.

1. Traditionally this was a neglected market, naturally practices followed was most of them are crude and not up to global standards. I work with embedded, engineering and safety critical systems market. There is clear cut difference the way address a requirement from global MNC and Indian domestic market requirement as the expectation are totally different.
That means practices have to improve to global level, which is now slowly happening, as the size of market attract more players.

2. Low margins used to be one big concern. But with pressure at overseas market and willingness by Indian market to pay more, the margin difference between both is finally reducing. But it is going to continue for some more time as there is enough tax cover still available for export income.

3. Absence of Indian players. Till recently we had two types of players here, one big MNCs like IBM, Accenture etc. and then some small time local guys who is not equipped to handle serious assignments. Most of the tire one and two Indian players were not present. But now they have also realized that this is the market where the action is going to be…

4.Delays. As we are known for IST (Indian Stretchable Time) everywhere you can see delays. If you don’t have ultimate patience, one may not see the end of the funnel here. May be private sector would be slightly better in the present global scenario. I know many companies burned their fingers after waiting for long time….

5.Traditional negative attitude towards computerization. Still there are govt agencies who have not seen a computer. If you go to our armed forces you will be shocked where some areas especially in army)usage of IT is below 25%. But the right initiative backed by education and awareness creation can convert this into an opportunity.

6. Corruption. Usage of IT to some extend removes corruption as it can help in increasing transparency. There are many Babu’s who hates IT as they think, many things will come in public domain and that will affect their money making channels. Thanks for initiatives like RTI, I am sure things will improve as we go forward..

7. Lack of interest among professionals. When there was a choice for working on domestic project vs overseas one, I have seen engineers always preferring the overseas one, due to various reasons like financial incentives, work culture etc… But as the market matures , I am sure here also things will change. On niche areas, situation is further worst. Recently , a French guy laughed at me when I was looking for overseas consultants, for specific skill sets ( meant for avionics and nuclear safety) which was not available in India!!!.

Many of these weaknesses are opportunity by itself. Some can be addressed with very effective planning process by involving industry leaders in specific domains. Finally I dream for a day where all our great leaders become IT savvy. Because, any drastic change is a society can only driven by leaders. I am sure industry leaders can add a lot in this process, like we have seen recently some of them joining the political system rather than just criticizing sitting in five star hotels….
Posted by Shinto Joseph

If Cost factor was strength, It has become our weakness or will be our greatest weakness in future. Projecting cost as a major factor in decision making. Weakness is not projecting the knowledge base and the value-add that can be provided. We should stop playing the cost game and project high in reliability, scalability and dependability.
Posted by Suresh Babu Modi

Weak Project Management and Leadership – meritocracy is not always predominant in Indian Software Industry context and many a times seniority is given preference over skillset/capabilities and talent.

Lack of good quality and willing mentors to groom the upcoming fresh engineering graduates

Posted by Shaloo Shalini

Weakness that can be improved: Unwillingness to say an upfront ‘no’ to clients where ever required.
Weakness seen by others: Inability to understand work culture and practices of overseas clients, especially in Europe and USA
Posted by Sunil Mundra

We have Challenges moving from Service based Approach to Product Model.
Require to utilize our technology and business efficiencies (strength) to Innovate new Products to introduce to our customers / partners

1) Service Oriented companies struggle to get into Innovations. We have Innovations and NOT able to convert into Products due to lack of insight into smart marketing approach
2) Understanding the Globalization
3) Lack of Power – Concern for Future Contracts
4) Entrepreneurs Mind set :
Business Stats provide insights from China – Entrepreneurs are increasing in china by approx 3- 5% per Year and allowing the increase the Economy.
5) Infrastructure
Posted by Mahesh Kumar Paturu

1. Arising from changes in the global market: Personally, I feel there is a trend towards “consumerization” of practically everything. We already see huge clamor for porting industrial strength solutions like ERP on essentially consumer platform like iPhones and other smart devices. I feel this could potentially extend to India as well. This is to add to the “usual suspects” in this area, around a whole suite of Web 2.0 technologies with user-driven content and sharing of personal content.

2. Arising from trends more specific to the Indian context:

• BI: Most big and mid-sized Indian companies seem to be near a “solid” state on their core functional platforms like ERP. For them, the next logical step would appear to leverage the rich data contained therein to churn out informational utilities at various levels of intelligence, depending upon their specific business context, ranging from mere aggregation-and-reporting to predictive analytics of various dimensions like Forecasts, Complex Events Processing (CEP) / Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Knowledge Based Systems
• Govt: I agree with you that the Govt is a high potential candidate for the Indian software market. One is the e-Governance strand (including the demystification and detoxification of processes and rules in the various Govt sectors from a “consuming” public standpoint and facilitating delivery via interventions like Portals, digital repositories and POS (Point-of-sale or Point-of-service) applications from a Govt perspective.
• Information, Education and Examination / Certification: Starting “from home” on this, a possible opportunity could be to syndicate content from various techno journals, including techno blogs and circulate as a collated e-Magazine to interested people (subscribers) in our own industry. A similar approach could be adopted for happening verticals like Healthcare and Education and a whole lot of professional services areas like Law, Accountancy, etc. The trick might be to create rich industry specific content, offer it online (preferably on pay-per-use or pay-per-user basis) and build downstream services like examination and certification of client company personnel.
Loosely, I can think of a few other areas but these were the top-of-the-mind ones.
Posted by Anonymous (Confidential)

1. What are the weaknesses which can be improved?

Data: Thinking of a software solution as composed of process automation with interfaces within and without and acting upon data as the substratum, it is the latter part viz. data that is the weakest link in most software produced in India. Viscerally, we seem to be comfortable – alas, I’m no exception to this malaise – in capturing processes (via fancy Visio diagrams), uncomfortable yet somehow able to figure out (at the nth instance) the interfaces part but flounder miserably with data definitions.

2. What are the weaknesses which need to be avoided?

Business Analysis and their sheer inability to think beyond the template: There is a certain craft behind this sphere of activity which is the X factor that can elevate a software solution to a business solution but, apparently ofn their own volition, the BAs seem to be content with just the science part. Granted the output of the BAs eventually has to be captured in a template but the process itself ought to have clearer and more original thinking.

3. What are the weaknesses as seen by others?

Soft aspects relating to the industry personnel as possible explanations for industry level deficiencies: I take “others” here to mean non-IT folks, especially in India. Well, as service consumers of software and as friends or relatives of people working in the IT industry, they are amazed by the sense of self-importance (conceit?) of the latter, which they find especially incongruous with the sheer lack of intellectual depth, spontaneity and creativity of the IT folks as well as the problems caused by software “solutions”! As one of my close relatives put it, “This is a phenomenal industry that burns the midnight oil to produce failures / dud products!”. Well, that may be going overboard yet there is a kernel of truth to it. For instance, the points above and this point are all interrelated – “Data is intractable, so it is out-of-syllabus”, “BAs, especially those onsite have to spend a lot of time on client engagement – (which ought to have been Client Education but has been made Client Appeasement) – and it suffices if they populate the templates rest of the time”.

The above issues are mere manifestation of deep structural (design time) and dynamic (run time) issues…

Posted by Anonymous (Confidential)

Only few companies have good SMEs who can generate business and increase an account to many times, otherwise small and mid size companies lack that. For good marketing, we need superb SMEs who go under client’s skin and convert account to many times.

- More coding, lesser consulting – please pardon me for saying this, but it’s the truth that Indian IT companies are going more into the labor work (i.e. hardcore coding, testing etc.). I see a lack of consulting approach. Perhaps, the reason is that client’s don’t have many capabilities to pay money for consulting. But believe me, good enterprises and ISVs still welcome companies offering consulting, that can add value to their business, ROI etc.

- Lack of HR focus/ inhuman working hours sometimes – that’s the truth of our industry and we however enjoy it. But please think from a human perspective that doesn’t this bring down a person’s quality/ focus after a long period of time? I may be sounding bit sentimental but it’s gonna be practically dangerous in the coming times.

- We are not much into innovations and software products – all we do is services mostly. Even investors in India do not invest much in R&D and innovative efforts. To grow, we should now focus more on innovating newer products, owned by India cos. For this, more responsibility goes to big giants and investors sitting here. We don’t have lack of talent or ideas; we instead have lack of patience, focus, and of course funding to build own products.

- Inadequate Marketing – restricted to some business areas only
Posted by Sudeep Bhatnagar

In My Perspective,

- Lack of significant presence in the global packages market
-Inadequate PC penetration levels that has resulted in a smaller domestic market
-Lack of original product development
-Inadequate marketing skills
-Inadequate localization efforts in the area of development
-Barring a few cases, alliances with global majors mostly for technology and not for strategic
purposes
Posted by Vishal Bhatia

Indian software companies are mostly not product oriented companies. They focus more on services. IPR issues can be a weakness
Posted by Sony Manjooran