Thirty Software Companies Separated From NASSCOM, Formed a New Association

 

Thirty Indian software product companies joined hands to form their own new association, marking a break-up with the IT industry body NASSCOM. Thirty founder members who were led by Bharat Goenka, co-founder of Tally Solutions, Vishnu Dusad, founder of Nucleus Software, Sharad Sharma, former head of Yahoo India R&D, startup mentor and founder of Brand Sigma and Naveen Tewari, founder of InMobi, will meet on 4 February 2013 to formalize this newly formed association and also for developing further action plans. The new association is called Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt.

Vision of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt

The vision of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt is to transform India in terms of IT and also deliver the invaluable IT solutions at the international level. The objective of iSpirt is to share experiences and expertise of these industries in order to create the awareness in government as well as society about the importance of IT. These 30 Indian software product companies that formed their new association believed that it was not possible for them to grow under larger umbrella of NASSCOM.

No conflict with NASSCOM

One of the founder members of the new association, Bharat Goenka made it clear that there were negotiations about new association formation since past six months. NASSCOM had in return promised support and that there were no conflicts with the IT body. Also, it was explained that the new association would work with everyone including NASSCOM.

Organisational structure of iSpirt

A founder member Sharad Sharma described that the new association iSpirt will not have a president or similar nomenclature. Instead, there will be a governing council that will consist of these four founding members- Sharma, Goenka, Tewari and Dusad. There will be a flat structure of the association. Volunteer model will be adopted.

About NASSCOM

•NASSCOM is expanded as National Association of Software and Services Companies. It is a trade association of the BPO and IT industry. It was established in 1988 and is a non-profit organisation.
•It is a global trade organisation with more than 1200 members out of which there are 250 global companies as well from China, Japan, Europe, UK and US.
•The member companies of NASSCOM have businesses such as software services, software development, BPO, IT and e-commerce.
•NASSCOM was established to facilitate trade and business in services and software in order to encourage advanced research in the software technology. It is registered under Indian Societies Act, 1860.
•At present, the headquarters of NASSCOM is in New Delhi.    

iSPIRT MISSION: WHAT DO WE DO?

We are a think tank with a difference. We will be doing three things:

We convert ideas into policy proposals to take to government stakeholders. Initially, we will engage with government policy makers and other policy bodies to explain, educate and inform audiences why a vibrant software product industry is vital to India’s future. Later, we will pursue policy positions related to software patents, taxation for software products (including SaaS), preferential buying mandates, and so on. We plan to have a symbiotic relationship with trade organizations, including NASSCOM, and see them leading the charge of converting our policy prescriptions into reality.

We convert conversations into playbooks for product entrepreneurs. Product companies need a different mindset than IT services businesses. They need to anticipate customer needs rather than just react to them. They need to brand themselves in very different ways and create IP that will disrupt the marketplace. They need deep technologists rather than fungible engineers. And so on. ProductNation.in will be the platform for enabling crucial conversations around these issues amongst practitioners. It will use an evidence based methodology to shine light on successful playbooks.

We convert actions of self-help communities into market catalysts for product industry. Many intractable ecosystem problems can’t be solved at the firm level. However they can be solved by a self-help community of individuals or companies. In the last 4-5 years, a number of such self-help communities have succeeded in the product industry. They have created successful events like the NASSCOM Product Conclave or programs like the CIO Connect. Now many more such initiatives are happening. These include programs like iSMB and M&A Connect. They are all inspired by the open source model and are self-organizing in nature. They seek to create “public goods” that benefit everybody within the product industry. We plan to support this self-help community model to build market catalysts for the industry.