When I was appointed as a non-executive director of the Goa govt. firm Infotech corporation of Goa by the then IT minister Dayanand Narvekar in 2005, I took the post with much enthusiasm. I thought this was my chance to contribute something to Goa.

Reality dawned very soon though. At the first board meeting of the IT corporation, I was a bit taken aback to see the discussion hovering around real estate. Not so familiar with terms such as FAR, landscaping, I decided to keep mum. But then, when the next board meeting also turned to be the same, I pinched myself to check whether I was dreaming or this was reality. After I consulted some of my friends who are in construction / real estate --- after all in Goa, if you throw a stone, chances are it will hit someone who is in real estate business --- I figured that the IT part of Infotech corporation in fact was just a fig leaf to cover the doling out of real estate in the Dona Paula IT park to friends and kin of the IT minister and his other cronies.

Obviously, I put my foot down at the subsequent board meeting. And I didnt last very much in the board after I had done that, as Narvekar finding that he couldnt get his bread buttered, reconstituted the board overnight and threw out the only two IT professionals on the board and replaced them with more of his cronies. The other person replaced was Mr. Sandeep Verekar of Anant Infotech.

But one particular incident in the whole episode of my tenure of the board remains still in my mind. One invitation for the board meeting was sent to me by email. The secretary apparently typed my email address wrong and hence the email must have bounced. However, those at the IT corporation not knowing even the A B C of sending an email did not know what an email bounce was. What they did was they duely took the printout of the email sent and filed it in their file. What a waste of trees, I would say, when the copy did exist in the mail box. In fact, among one of the things IT is supposed to do is to save paper, but by printing everything again and filing it, this purpose is completely defeated.

Coming back to the incident, obviously, I didnt receive an invite to the Board meeting in which it was decided to dole out Rs. 30 crores by Narvekar to his buddy in the name of infrastructure development. I did object to me not being invited and I was shown the printout to convince me that I was indeed sent the invite. I did not know whether to laugh or to cry seeing the IT knowledge of those of our state who are meant to be in charge of IT. It was indeed very difficult to convince these IT challenged people what an email bounce is. In my career of more than 25 years, I have faced many a top IT professionals asking me tough questions, but I hadnt faced such a challenge. Here was Narvekar strongly defending his men --- saying you cant criticize my men, they are my men after all -- and here I was a lone man against a whole army trying to tell them what an email bounce was. With such people in charge, any wonder that we are indeed the IT backwaters of India.

Narvekar is no more the IT minister now, the Dona Paula park has been stalled if not entirely scrapped, and IT is no more in the news nowadays in Goa. Perhaps, the Govt. looks at IT only as a department where they can give out contracts for purchase of computers and other stuff and get hefty cuts in the bargain. Thus, a state where a number of bright students graduate in the field of IT, all have to go away to Bangalore, Mumbai for jobs.

Is there a way out for us then ? Or are we forever doomed to be IT industry's backwaters ?

In this two part column, I will put forth my views on what we can do in the IT field.

Here is the state of affairs in India today re: IT. Internet penetration in India is growing. As of 2007, the number of Internet users were around 40 million. The urban internet penetration was about 9%, while the country's overall internet penetration was 3.6%. Obviously, we have way more to go, but we have had a good rate of growth. Along with Internet penetration, many businesses are now moving to the Internet. Ecommerce is slowly coming up, if not booming.

In the next few years, my guess is that even a small business in India will have a website and will start doing business via the Internet. This gives rise to huge opportunities.

Website design is the most basic of opportunities. Though commoditized, the market for website design in India is huge. And the nice thing about electronic/Internet business is that one doesnt have to make the physical trip to the customer's premises; this gives rise to huge possibilities of saving of time and effort as well as scaling. To give an example, Cisco, the US based mammoth networking giant, sells 25% of its goods electronically without even having a face-to-face meeting with the customer. Yahoo, google, ebay the leaders of the new economy make their billions without even a single physical face-to-face interaction with most of their customers. Video conferencing is always a choice if one wants to get the feel of seeing the other person. This is a double advantage --- if one can avoid a face-to-face meeting and still do business, it means one can save on travel and consequent fuel and other transport expenses; traffic on the roads too is likely to be reduced. And lack of infrastructure in our cities is not going to pinch us as much. Besides, with good broadband which is now available in major cities in India and even in Goa, one can just work from home.

IT and telecom not just help businesses which are directly into IT such as web site design, but it also helps other businesses which have nothing to do with IT in the product that they sell --- these are called brick and mortar businesses. Today, car mechanics --- at least the more e-savvy ones --- routinely send SMSes to their customers to remind them when their car is due for service. An SMS has an advantage against the phone; one can read it at leisure, unlike the phone for which one has to interrupt everything and take the call. India by the way is a leader in the mobile market worldwide with mobile penetration growing fast. Cellular market penetration is projected to increase from 19.8% in 2007 to 60.7% in 2012, due to the increasing focus on the rural market. Gartner expects that by 2012, there will be 637 million connections in India. Even this gives rise to huge opportunities; marketing one's product via the SMS has already caught up in a big way.

IT infrastructure, and things such as websites are just enablers for more businesses to take off on. Most businesses are about reaching out to the customers effectively with a goods or service which they want at a price they can afford. In Delhi, Namita Sibal sells Indian paintings to art conneissures worldwide via a website indianartcollectors.com ; she manages both her household as well as the business, working from home. Her revenues for 2008 were predicted to be Rupees one crore.

It is amazing how the young have taken to the internet; it is akin to a duck taking to water. There are many a young fellas into startups. In Bangalore alone there are more than 800 startups, various kinds of businesses mostly by the young. Some of the more prominent Indian startups include bharatmatrimony.com a matrimonial site started by a person in his twenties, slokatelecom.com a WiMax router company targetted towards the Indian rural market among other things, drishti-soft.com a company that makes software that helps call centers deal with calls better, to a webdesign company Globals Inc which has one of the youngest CEOs in the world.

The nice thing about IT is that it doesnt take much capital to start a business. However, having capital makes it easier to scale and sustain in adverse times. The prices of computers and the peripherals needed, the prices of internet connections, the prices of telecom have come down drastically in the last few years and continue to come down. A huge number of softwares needed for businesses are available for free. At one level, all what it takes is brain power, and tapping of the right market. Surely, electricity which is still in the hands of the govt. is unreliable. This has given rise to the UPS market which is in private hands.

Health care is another booming sector. I am told in the West, patients can access their medical records sitting at home. In India, as far as I know, this is not possible yet. This gives rise to a huge opportunity. If I could access my health records electronically, I could perhaps forward the records to another specialist easily again, and get a second opinion. In that sense, IT makes communication easy and more effective; this also means that vested interests who thrive on hiding information would oppose such an initiative. No wonder, the Goa govt. doesnt have the basics of e-governance in place while they make big noises about e-governance. In the recent Mahanand case, we have found that lack of exchange of information about missing people has led Mahanand go on a killing spree. Of course, having information is just the first part; acting on it is important too.

Another important field is network security. For e-commerce to be popular, there has to be good security so that customers can buy goods without worrying that their credit card numbers would be stolen. India is lagging behind in security, and that is another area where there is a good opportunity.

Coming to Goa, what could Goans do in this field ?

Goa faces a few serious lacunae in this regard. Goa does not have close physical access to the Indian market. Goa itself is a small market; selling something to companies in Bangalore and Mumbai would require presence in these cities which would mean additional costs. Neverthless, Goa does have some industry namely in the area of pharmaceuticals, hospitality etc. Even these industries need software, and Goans could target these areas.

Also, to some extent, this problem can be solved by targetting markets abroad. Today, communications has made the world a small place. There has been no better time for small businesses worldwide. On the Internet, one can make a product in Goa and sell it to a peson in faraway Brazil without spending a penny on marketing. Search engines such as google help one market the product. Payment gateways such as paypal help the customers pay for the product using credit cards. And cheap hosting services help one host the product on servers in the US, Canada etc which are available at very reasonable prices. All one needs is an idea and oodles of hard work. Of course, the latter is the key. However, marketing something internationally and succeeding is also more difficult because the competition is severe.

This brings me to the second lacunae of Goans, namely that Goans in Goa are not known to be hard working. A part of the reason is the susegado atmosphere in Goa. In Bangalore, every morning, you will find the whole city rushing to work. And without much of a break, they will work till late evening. In Goa, we need our afternoon siesta and a good break. However, this aspect is not insurmountable. Today via the Internet, news is available from all over the world and one could virtually live in an atomsphere and environment much different from the local environment. It is not that there are no state-of-the-art IT companies in Goa. I have heard of a gaming company right in the heart of Panjim ( rz2games.com ), where it seems young geeks go and do their coding on the beach. They are attired in shorts and T-shirts. In fact, if one thinks the right way, one could take advantage of the unique pluses of Goa namely the beaches and combine it with work.

A third disadvantage in Goa is the lack of support services. Here in Bangalore, if you need some hardware or a computer part, it is available instantly at a beck and call. In Goa, it may not be. This just means that more planning is required. Also, this also gives rise to opportunities in selling hardware, peripherals. Btw, trading of goods is another huge area that has turned up in India. Selling of hardware and support services is another opportunity.

Fourthly, and this is a problem in India in general, which is lack of capital. Most of the investors in India are in the so called old economy, and they dont understand IT related businesses. As a result, they dont invest. Banks do not give venture funding. In general, this makes the IT business hard. As a result, most IT professionals choose employment over entreprenuership. Most of the big IT companies being in Bangalore and other places, getting an employment in such places is much easier than in Goa. As a result, Goans migrate. This problem is kind-of-a catch-22 phenomena. Big companies dont come to Goa because there is no good climate for IT, and creating a good IT climate in Goa requires that there be a number of companies which leads to more IT skilled people being there and so on. Our governments being what they have been --- they aren't helping for sure. As a result, what is required is super human effort on the part of Goans.

Given all of the above, I feel that even though it seems theoretically possible for Goans to break into the IT big league, the practicality of it shows that there are a number of areas in which the going is going to be tough. Thus, I feel it is not so easy to get Goa out of the IT backwaters without some help. Unless for instance govt. takes a strong initiative in providing venture capital or inviting companies from outside to set up shop in Goa or even inviting entrepreneurs from outside, it is going to require a super human effort. The Kerala govt. for instance has invited a number of entreprenuers from outside to set up shop and today Kerala is a thriving IT destination. In the absence of the above, the future does not look bright. Of course, there are a few Goans who have already started some companies in Goa due to their love of Goa, but as they say one swallow doesnt a summer make.

All one can conclude is that we need to put severe pressure on the government to do its part. We cannot let it get away. After all, too much is at stake.