NASSCOM

Introduction

Name : National Association Of Software and Service

Companies

Establishment : 1988

Executive Director : Dewang Mehta

NASSCOM is an industry association representing the interests of computer software and service companies in India. It plays an important active role in the International community and is an umbrella organization comprising of 373 industry members. It was formed to foster and promote software development for Export and for Local applications.

Exhibitions And Trade Fairs

Exhibitions and Trade fairs create opportunities for companies to develop business links, establish contacts with prospective clients. Nasscom has participated and sponsored many exhibitions. Since 1991, NASSCOM has successfully organised many software focused trade exhibition under the title of "NASSCOM". Following are some of the exhibitions with their objectives :

NASSCOM ‘92

The participation rate in this exhibition was a pleasant surprise. Several speakers from abroad turned up including some big names such as Mr.Barry Loennon of IBM, Mr.Jnan Dash of Oracle, Mr. Christopher Benett of DECTA and Mr. W G Buetner of Siemens.

The issues discussed included global and Indian opportunities, strategic alliances and marketing channels, intellectual property, ISO 9000 and off-shore development. The exhibition , however, was small, but international giants like Microsoft Corp. and Silicon Graphics participated. Silicon also launched its IRIS Indigo, advanced computing system in India.

The main focus of this event was not much on exhibition but was on conference. But surely was a smaller exhibition with advantages.

NASSCOM’93

It was a four-day exhibition organized by NASSCOM in New Delhi. This exhibition proved that an industry has diversified to grab opportunities in Europe, South-East Asia and Far East. Government was no longer an important regulator but an active promoter.

Through this exhibition all the software industry were set to convert India’s large population disadvantage to tomorrow’s golden opportunity. Nasscom provided an opportunity to Asian Oceania Computing Industry Organization(ASOCIO) member countries to sign a position paper to protect intellectual property rights related to software.

Software India ‘95 & NASSCOM ’95

Success Through Global Alliances was the theme for seminars conducted during Software India 95 & NASSCOM 95 exhibition.

It was a shrink wrapped show held in January 95 and was held at the Ashoka Hotel. The delegates registered in Nasscom’s annual show were 440 in no., they were mostly from the 300 member companies of the software forum. About 67 foreign and Indian companies participated in the exhibition and demonstrated their latest ware in NASSCOM ‘95. The exhibition covered a total area of 1800 sq. feet spreading over two halls and totalling 230 stalls. The biggest stall

was put up by Software Service Support and Education Centre(3SE). The sponsors of the sessions were Motorola(India), NIIT, TCS etc.

The convention part of the exhibition , Software India’95 was inaugurated by the US Commerce Secretary, Frank Wisner. New entrants were E-x 3.0 by TCS and Smart Series by Ashok Leyland IT Ltd., besides others. There was a drift towards windows, though Dos and Unix still remained the dominant operating system. There was a launch of LAN(Local Area Network) versions of all the packages. Financial Accounting Package claimed the large share of the launches. The software developers involved themselves in demonstrating products espscially in stalls of foreign giants like Apple, Microsoft, SunSoft-Wipro and Oracle.

The seminar covered relevant and informative topics such as multimedia, the information SuperHighway intellectual property rights and software firms. A business centre was set up NASSCOM and a fashion show was conducted by NASSCOM and NIFT.

"Challenges Of the Millennium"

This was the theme of IT India’96/Comdex exhibition, the largest event in Asia sponsored by MAIT and NASSCOM and supported by COMDEX and BIE (Business India Exhibition). Both the hardware and software companies displaying their wares under one roof. It had 500 companies participating, spread across almost 25000 sq. metres of 10 major halls of Pragati Maidan.

The event covered the entire technology spectrum from systems and business application software to workstations and OEM sourcing, from client-server to Intranet applications, etc.

The aim was to make the exhibitions as a place to do business, strike deals and create an event for an effective interaction between various vendors and their prospective customers. Thus IT

India’96 managed to capture the imagination of the IT community as no exhibition-cum-conference has done before. It was a comprehensive, all-encompassing relevant show.

NASSCOM 96

It was held in Mumbai from February 7 to 10. The show attracted 1800 delegates from various parts of the world, most of them were officials of foreign companies which have set up software development centres in India or are marketing their packages.

Also a multi-track conference was held which was categorised into two broad parts: US-India IT Conference and Internet Business and Technology Conference. Management Guru, C K Prahalad, from the University of Michigan, conducted a full days interactive workshop on "Industry Leadership Summit", to help software companies to shift focus from re-engineering processes to re-investing industries. With USA becoming the partner country to NASSCOM’96, every major US IT company displayed products. The US India IT Conference was held at NASSCOM’96 by NASSCOM and the US-India Business Council. The software sector represents a dynamic partnership between the US and India.

The aim of this exhibition was to prove India’s dominance in the global software industry.

CyberCity Conference and Exhibition

The NASSCOM’97 annual convention of the software industry and the accompanying Cybercity Conference and Exhibition, was held in Banglore from September 24 to 27. The exhibition, though small, focused on the ISP gear - the infrastructure , Web Publishing and

networking tools. The accent, throughout the conference, was on software exports.

Two clear goals emerged from the four-day conference, NASSCOM ‘97, conducted by NASSCOM.

• Identify and tap the potential Internet market, which is expected to touch $120 billion by the year 2000.