Nasscom recently announced that India's exports of software and services such as call centers and back-office operations totaled $23.6 billion in the year to March 31, up by 33% from a year earlier.India's revenue from exports of software development, call centers and back-office processing will grow by 25 percent a year to $60 billion by 2010, according to a study last year by Nasscom and consulting firm McKinsey and Co. The country will however have to work around an anticipated shortage of 500,000 staff by 2010, and infrastructure bottlenecks, the report added.

The country has emerged as a major hub for offshore software development, call centers, and back-office operations, as foreign companies have outsourced to Indian companies or set up their own development or services centers in the country. The figures released by Nasscom include revenue of both Indian subsidiaries of multinational companies and those of Indian outsourcing companies.Of the total exports in the year to March 31, exports of software and related services grew by 33% to $13.3 billion, while revenue from call centers and business process outsourcing grew 37% to $6.2 billion. Engineering services and product exports earned $4 billion, up by 27% from the previous fiscal year.Revenue from software and services delivered in the domestic market grew by 25% to $6 billion.

The country's software and services sector employed 1.3 million as of March 31, of which 930,000 were employed in the export sector. Indirect employment by the software and services sector was 3 million.

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Prashanth Rai