Today Brand India stands for:
1. A large consumer market
2. A back office to the world
3. The largest democracy in the world

I observe multiple developments emerging in the near future, which will have a positive impact on Brand India. The first change I see is on the economic front. India will become the third-largest economy in the world in the next 10 years if we are able to sustain a GDP growth of 9 per cent.

The second change I see is the face of Indian business — this is becoming broad-based. We see a larger number of Indian businesses venturing outside the country, acquiring businesses and setting up operations around the world. Hence, the second aspect of the brand is Growing Indian Multinationals. The third aspect of Brand India is in the area of innovation. From simply being the back office to the world, it is now possible for us to progress to emerge as the Innovation Hub for the world. There are two reasons why this potential exists:

1. India will have the secondlargest engineering pool and engineering student population;
2. Multinational corporations will increase their R&D base in India to tap the talent pool, as well as to create new products and services for various developing countries, including India.

While the above transformations may take some time to fructify, it is certainly heartening to see that in the short term, growth has returned to the IT sector in India. The industry will see growth rates of 15 per cent or higher. This is good news for the economy and for the job market. The industry is recruiting in large numbers to support the renewed growth.

In the medium term, the industry will have to invest more in R&D and innovation. Innovations will emerge in business models to take advantage of technology trends like cloud computing. Research will create new solutions for some of the largest challenges facing humanity like sustainability, affordable and quality healthcare, digital consumers, increased collaboration and productivity using social networks, among others. Each of these is a mega trend and would require significant investments to extract advantages.

Both exports and the domestic economy would benefit from the growth of this industry. In the domestic sector, the increased use of IT will also improve productivity and governance.

- S. Gopalakrishnan