India's tech sector eyes $350 bn by 2030: Nasscom president Nambiar

BENGALURU: India’s tech industry is poised to expand to $350 billion by 2030, up from $254 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, Nasscom's president Rajesh Nambiar told TOI in an interaction. The sector's expansion reflects a CAGR of 6.4%. “We will work towards getting to about a $350 billion mark by 2030. Of course, the growth rate came down significantly in the last two years. But even with all of that, we are seeing a lot of green shoots. I believe that we are in a pivotal moment. The emergence of GenAI has transformed the global landscape. Our focus must transition from AI PoCs to achieving measurable return on investments that we can put together on the board,” said Nambiar. He succeeds his predecessor Debjani Ghosh, who completed her term in November. Prior to that, Nambiar was chairman and MD of Cognizant India.

Nasscom initially forecasted the tech sector's revenues of $350 billion for the 2026 financial year, driven by demand for advanced technologies such as cloud computing and analytics. However, the IT industry body had to reset these growth estimates, extending the timeline by approximately five years to achieve the targeted figures. The Indian IT services sector faces a significant slowdown in the last fiscal , with minimal expansion in both revenue and employment. IT exports grew a modest 3.3% in constant currency, reaching $199 billion in the 2023-24 financial year. This represents a substantial decline from the previous year's 11.4% growth, marking one of the sector's lowest growth rates historically. Overall, including the domestic business, India’s tech sector grew 3.8% to reach $254 billion, adding an incremental revenue of $9 billion.

Nambiar said the focus on continuous skill development and upskilling remains crucial, particularly as the industry operates with merit-based curricula in advanced technologies. "The challenge lies in managing this transition effectively to capitalise on emerging opportunities. As Nasscom, we must prepare the industry for the next wave of disruption. With every new technology, we believe that there will be euphoria in the beginning, and then it will eventually create a bit of a disruption, which means that we need to prepare ourselves to do things differently. With emerging technologies, there is initial enthusiasm followed by disruptive changes, necessitating adaptations in our approach. This pattern is evident with AI and GenAI. Our role extends beyond AI preparedness to include quantum computing and semiconductors; each of these domains will introduce significant changes to the industry landscape,” he added.

He also said the global capability centres (GCCs) witnessed significant proliferation in the last five years. “Given this background and context, there are several areas where we need to establish a distinct position. While these changes may not be revolutionary, they are essential for us to implement if we aim to boost industry growth and transformation."

Regarding Nasscom's assessment of the Trump administration's influence on India's IT industry, “Strategically, we had a good equation. Under Trump’s first term, we went through certain tactical actions which were very different. In Trump 2.0, we still expect a few things to be different. We want to separate what we call talent mobility, and that should not be clubbed with immigration. Will there be a little bit of a tactical repositioning that we need to do? The answer is yes. I think we are getting ready to do that. We've been working with the companies to make sure that they are ready for that. But I believe that this is not a showstopper for us,” Nambiar added.


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