Today, IT is a $5.7 billion industry in India, and it is projected to be an $8 billion industry by 2002-maybe $80 billion by 2010.Īnd yet, as I leave HITEC City, I ride over craggy roadways crammed with cars, motorbikes and cows. Ten years ago, IT was a $150 million industry in India’s largely agrarian economy-a piddling amount considering the country’s population of 1 billion. The result is what one sees from the rooftop of Cyber Towers: a country absolutely transformed by the business of IT. By making it easier for the world to do business, India finally got its chance to stand and deliver in the global marketplace.

Narasimha Rao’s government initiated a series of reforms designed to open India’s insular, insecure economy. It was only nine years ago that ex-Prime Minister P.V. There was no HITEC City, no IIIT and no Cyber Towers. Ten years ago, none of these things existed. Below me, in the Cyber Towers itself, is a vibrant glass-and-steel complex already aglow from the energy of such big-name tenants as General Electric, Microsoft and Oracle. To my left is the still-under-construction Cyber Gateway, an 886,000 square foot office complex that will soon open its doors to a host of high-tech tenants eager to take advantage of India’s low-cost labor and HITEC City’s high-value telecommunications infrastructure and modern amenities. To my right is the brand-new Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), a public/private venture tailor-made to train a new generation of knowledge workers. Eleven stories high and fighting to stand in a monsoon wind, I survey greater Hyderabad and see just how much the IT industry has changed India. This is what I remind myself as I stand atop Cyber Towers in HITEC City, one of India’s ultramodern IT office parks. Amid poverty, sickness and the occasional riot, they met with leaders in IT, government and business who have high hopes for India’s future as an information age powerhouse. CIO Senior Editors Tom Field and Cheryl Bentsen traveled to five Indian IT hot spots in August and September.

India unbound