GS 2: Governance | Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors

Why in News?

The Union Cabinet has approved the National Policy on Software Products – 2019 to develop India as a Software Product Nation.

Highlights:

• To promote the creation of a sustainable Indian software product industry, driven by intellectual property (IP), leading to a ten-fold increase in India share of the Global Software product market by 2025.
• To nurture 10,000 technology startups in software product industry, including 1000 such technology startups in Tier-II and Tier-III towns & cities and generating direct and in-direct employment for 3.5 million people by 2025.
• To create a talent pool for software product industry through up-skilling of 1,000,000 IT professionals,
  motivating 100,000 school and college students an generating 10,000 specialized professionals that can provide leadership.
• To build a cluster-based innovation driven ecosystem by developing 20 sectoral and strategically located software product development clusters having integrated ICT infrastructure, marketing, incubation, R&D/testbeds and mentoring support.
• In order to evolve and monitor scheme & programmes for the implementation of this policy, National Software Products Mission will be set up with participation from Government, Academia and Industry.

Major impact:

The Software product ecosystem is characterized by innovations, Intellectual Property (IP) creation and large value addition increase in productivity, which has the potential to significantly boost revenues and exports in the sector.

Implementation strategy and targets:

The Policy will lead to the formulation of several schemes, initiatives, projects and measures for the development of Software products sector in the country as per the roadmap envisaged therein.