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    Impact of 'Make in India' & 'Digital India' in the tech world will be felt in 2017-18: Rajiv Sundar

    Synopsis

    The biggest trend has been the emergence of new businesses. For instance, this year 12 of our winners is from the field of software intelligence and cyber security, 7-8 are in the business of product providers.

    ET Online
    In its 12th year, Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India has always been about honouring the Indian technology companies and celebrating their growth.

    While the Tech Fast 50 companies bask in the glory, we discuss how relevant is this honour, what are the sustained benefits of Deloitte's annual exercise and how is it bringing about a change in India's technology ecosystem with Rajiv Sundar, Partner, Deloitte India

    Economic Times (ET): How has the Tech Fast 50 evolved over the years? What criteria do you employ while making your selections?
    Rajiv Sundar (RS): The concept of Tech Fast 50 evolved first in the mid 1990s in the Silicon Valley - the place where the evolution of technology companies was taking place. This programme later branched out into Europe and then came to Asia Pacific around 2002-03. In the beginning, only two-three countries were participating in the Asia-Pacific programme and it was only in 2005 that India started its own programme. The Asia-Pacific programme is slightly different from the one in North America. There are seven contributory countries in the Asia Pacific region - each with their individual Tech Fast 50 programmes. All these countries send in their nominations to Asia Pacific which then get compiled into the final list of Asia Pacific Tech Fast 500.

    This is the 12th year of conducting Tech fast 50 in India. The idea behind it is very simple. We, at Deloitte, felt that there is a need for a forum where technology companies can be given recognition purely on the performance basis. There were a lot of programmes celebrating qualitative attributes; however, this mostly entails some degree of bias. This programme obliterates all kinds of bias from the selection procedure as the criterion is kept quantitative.

    First and foremost, you have to be an Indian company since this is an Indian programme. You may have a lot of business originating from outside of the country, but you need to have your headquarters here. Also, in order to rule out any unfair leverage, we ensure that these companies are not a subsidiary of any large corporation. However, if you are independently listed in India, you can participate.

    Next, you must have a bare minimum of Rs 30 lakh as revenue in the base year. This is to provide credibility in the form of tangible revenues so that the companies can demonstrate growth on a three-year scale. We being an audit firm ensure that all the accounts we receive are audited.

    ET: What is your ambition with this programme? What kind of an impact do you want to make on the technology world with Tech Fast 50?
    RS: We want to provide some kind of recognition to these businesses. Most of these winners are mid-tier businesses which get a major boost to their morale with the recognition. These people are not the big boys of the technology world for whom it is easy to attract talent. This platform gives them that recognition in the job market. Also, we have seen the interest quotient of financial investment community increasing in the companies which win. This year, even before the ranks were revealed, a lot of active conversations have already been initiated around investment.

    This programme has also provided an ecosystem for winners to leverage off each other. In order to facilitate that, two years back we started holding interactive events before the main event so that the winners can get to know each other so as to provide an enabler for possible collaborations. A lot many companies are now pairing off; while it is not in the form of M&A alliances there have been a lot of tech collaborations.

    ET: What has been the progression in the kind of nominations you have received over the years?
    RS: This year we have submitted close to 106 companies to the Asia Pacific programme out of the 200 nominations we received. I have managed the Indian programme since 2011 and in the earlier days it was vastly a software development game. Although even today these players continue to dominate, we have started seeing a lot of participation from slightly high-end service providers. There are a lot of consultative providers of software development, which means that these players believe in sitting down with clients and thinking through their problems instead of just codifying. Also, Internet of Things (IoT) is catching up while internet enabled media has been making its mark for some time now. There is a lot of open source technology rather than close source in the play. Another encouraging sign is the emergence of the players who are dealing in software products.

    In short, the evolution in the last few years has been in the form of ideas made into reality. We may not be the Whatsapp or the Linkedin of the world yet, but we are getting there.

    ET: Have you started seeing the impact of government schemes like 'Make in India' and 'Digital India' in the technology world?
    RS: My personal belief is that we will see the impact of these initiatives only in the next two years. We have already begun to see some shades of it, but not yet the full impact. In the next couple of years, we will see companies leveraging the ecosystem which the government is trying to create. A lot of ideas are already originating, but they will take time to be commercially viable. We will see the full force of these programmes only in 2017-18.

    ET: What are the key trends that you have seen emerging this year?
    RS: The biggest trend has been the emergence of new businesses. For instance, this year 12 of our winners is from the field of software intelligence and cyber security, 7-8 are in the business of product providers. Although there are only a couple of fintech companies in the play, but they are the big boys and next year, possibly, we will see fintech companies dominating the landscape. Another exciting trend is the way education technology companies are operating. Contrary to letting schools and universities act as enablers, these edutech companies are independently reaching out to their customers and acting like product businesses.

    ET: How do you perceive the Tech Fast 50 panning out in future?
    RS: This year we have had 27 companies as repeat winners. Last year, this number was 31. It is a very good sign. Also, 13 of the companies have continued their winning streak from last year. Although we have not done individual mapping since 2005, but we have rarely seen past winners not existing today. This shows that these are all sustained businesses and although they all may not have been able to maintain the pace of growth when they were winners, but they are definitely growing.

    Also, a lot of our companies receive heavy funding while some get acquired by the big boys in North America and Europe. As for IPOs, few companies have gone down that path, but that is more likely a reflection of the market sentiment. A lot of winners this year have the potential of going the IPO route and I predict that 5-10% of them will go to the markets in the next 3-4 years.
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