During 2002–03, while some companies managed to significantly increase their revenues by as much as 30 percent, others could manage only 15–16 percent. Overall, the industry is estimated to have grown by about 19 percent to amass revenues of Rs 5,570 crore. This figure includes the sales and development of software products, embedded software for telecom, and protocol stacks. It also includes services—software applications development, software integration and management and software consultancy. Revenue from IT-enabled services, content, and enterprise applications and software provided to telecom companies has not been included.

Market Shares
The big names in IT software industry—TCS, Wipro, MBT, Infosys, and HCL Technologies—command this market too.

The market share held by these top five companies in 2002–03 was 58.6 percent. In absolute value, the total revenue from these companies added to Rs 3,264 crore. The market place has always been keenly contested between Wipro and TCS for the top slot. While in 2001-02, Wipro was the leader with total revenues of Rs 1,000 crore, in 2002–03 it was TCS with Rs 900 crore. Wipro’s revenues have come down to Rs 654 crore in 2002–03. This has primarily been on account of completion of the $70 million project from Lattice group. TCS registered 41 percent growth, MBT 20 percent growth, Infosys 35.7 percent growth, and HCL Technologies about 39.7 percent growth.

Trends
This industry has three kinds of players. The IT software companies which have a focus in the telecom too like Wipro and TCS, pure-play telecom software companies like Axes Technologies, Future Software, Sasken, and Subex. Then, there are captive centres like Cisco’s, Nortel’s, and Texas Instruments. The first two categories offer both products and services in this space

HCL, TCS, and Wipro’s offerings cover the entire range of the telecom arena. For most of them, the telecom industry practice is the second-largest vertical practice. For example, TCS’ telecom share would be 20 percent of its total revenues. Similarly for HCL, it is about 30 percent, and for Wipro it is about 35 percent. These companies have strong associations with leading telcos and equipment manufacturers and over the period of time have acquired a strong understanding of the telecom domain. Besides, they work with the equipment vendors too. The clientele includes Alcatel, America Online, AT&T, British Telecom, Cisco, Ericsson, Nortel, NTT, OmanTel, Qwest, SBC, Siemens, SingTel, South West Bell, Swisscom, Sycamore, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra, and Verizon, among others.

The second category of telecom-only players have a lineage of working with one exclusive client. They also offer products and services. Their product revenues account for about 40 percent of their total revenues.

The captive development centers are growing too. The estimated exports from Cisco, Huawei, Lucent, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens, etc. adds to about Rs 400 crore.

There has been an emergence of start-ups betting on India to develop their own products or professional services capabilities (having their own intellectual properties) for the global market, in the entire telecom value chain. These companies are creating technologies or products or services that bear their own manufacturing stamps. Examples are AdventNet, Alopa Networks, Aplion Networks, Bay Packets Technologies, Bluefont, Cygsoft Phonologies, Deccanet, Impulsesoft, Infozech Software, Ionic Microsystems, iPDialog, ipGen Inc., ipolicy Networks, Ishoni Networks, Ittiam Systems, Jataayu, July Systems, Lifetree Convergence, Mistral Software, Peak XV Networks, SunTec, UshaComm, WDC Solutions, Winphoria Networks, Wisor Telecom, and Zintec.

Ch. Srinivas Rao