About NASSCOM	A+  A-

NASSCOM® is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 1200 members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOM's member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPO services, e-commerce & web services, engineering services offshoring and animation and gaming. NASSCOM’s membership base constitutes over 95% of the industry revenues in India and employs over 2.24 million professionals.

NASSCOM was set up in 1988, at Mumbai to facilitate business and trade in software and services and to encourage advancement of research in software technology. It is a not-for-profit organization, registered under the Indian Societies Act, 1860. Currently, NASSCOM is headquartered in New Delhi, India with regional offices in the cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Pune.

In India and around the world, NASSCOM members are active participants in the new global economy and are reputed for their innovative business practices, social initiatives and thrust for foraying into new emerging opportunity areas.

NASSCOM's Vision is to maintain India's leadership position in the global sourcing IT industry, to grow the market by enabling industry to tap into emerging opportunity areas and to strengthen the domestic market in India.

Aims and Objectives

NASSCOM aims to drive the overall growth of the global offshoring market and maintain India’s leadership position, by taking up the role of a strategic advisor to the industry. NASSCOM’s varied strengths include advocacy on public policy, international trade development, research and market intelligence services, and access to an international network through 20 MoUs and linkages with 40 industry associations across the globe. This enables NASSCOM to advise members – both established and emerging companies to further their growth.

Other goals include accelerating trade development efforts, improving talent supply, strengthening local infrastructure, building partnerships and driving operational excellence. It also boosts the process of Innovation; IT workforce development and enhanced cyber security.

NASSCOM’s seven fold strategy towards achieving these objectives:

1. Strengthen the brand equity of India as a premier global sourcing destination
2. Partner with Government of India and State Governments in formulating IT policies and legislation. Partner with global stakeholders for promoting the industry in global markets
3. Strive for a thought leadership position and deliver world-class research and strategic inputs for the industry and its stakeholders
4. Expand the quantity and quality of the talent pool in India
5. Continuous engagement with all member companies and stakeholders to devise strategies to achieve shared aspirations for the industry and the country.
6. Encourage and facilitate members to uphold world class quality and service delivery standards
7. Aim to uphold Intellectual Property Rights

NASSCOM Membership - NASSCOM welcomes as members, companies and firms that are incorporated and/or are registered in India, which have made and will make positive contributions to the IT industry in India and globally. Member companies are expected to comply with NASSCOM’s code of conduct.

Membership Strength - The membership of NASSCOM has been steadily increasing. In 1988, NASSCOM had 38 members, who together contributed close to 65 percent of the revenue of the software industry. Since then, membership of NASSCOM has grown multifold to reach over 1300 members in 2008. These members currently account for over 95 percent of the revenues of the software industry in India.

National Skills Registry (NSR)

NSR is a centralized database of employees of the IT services and BPO companies in India. This database contains third party verified personal, qualification and career information of IT professionals. It is an employee-friendly measure to minimize any misuse of employee identity, where employers will be able to view the verified resume of the IT professional.
 
NASSCOM Assessment of Competence (NAC)

In line with this rationale the NASSCOM Assessment of Competence (NAC) is an Assessment and Certification framework to ensure a steady supply of quality professionals to meet the present and future requirements of the IT-BPO industry. NAC aims to create a robust and continuous pipeline of talent through a standard assessment and certification. It also helps to provide insights into the training and development needs of talent and helps, Governments and Universities develop customized talent development initiatives and programs. This framework is available for IT industry (NAC-Tech) and BPO (NAC).

NASSCOM FORUMS & INITIATIVES

Animation & Gaming Forum: The NASSCOM Animation & Gaming forum is focused on building the nascent but high potential animation and gaming industry in the country. Focused events, research, policy and talent development on the thrust area.

BPO Forum: The forum aims to build a sustainable BPO advantage in India through research, events and manpower development initiatives.

Domestic IT Market Initiative: NASSCOM’s initiatives in the domestic IT market are focused on developing upstream linkages and downstream linkages between the IT industry and other stakeholders of the domestic IT market.

Education Initiative: The Education initiative aims to catalyse IT-BPO industry interface with the Academia to ensure availability of globally employable quality IT-BPO professionals. Specific programme on enhancing capacity & employment of the workforce is undertaken.Emerging Companies Forum: The forum provides a platform for the emerging companies segment to share experiences, ally on critical projects and even focuses on partnerships to cater to customer demands.

Engineering Services Forum: The forum aims to assist engineering service providers to optimally exploit the potential for engineering services offshoring/ outsourcing and help India achieve global dominance in this space.

Global Enterprise Product Support forum (GEPS) – This forum aims to build synergies to realize a combined vision. To build India’s potential as a leader in global enterprise level product support by 2012 and is focused towards multinational companies that leverage India through product support.

Gender Inclusivity Initiative: The forum focuses on mentoring and empowering women managers across junior, middle and senior level from the IT Industry through various workshops, activities and training sessions.

Green IT Initiative: The recently launched NASSCOM Green IT initiative is focused on enabling IT-BPO industry in India to contribute towards the environment through technology, and adoption of environmentally friendly infrastructure.

Global Trade Development Program: The focus of the trade development program is to engage with international stakeholders, the government, customers and associations to collaborate on issues related to international policy, visa/work permit and business partnerships.

Internet Working Group: There is a significant representation of members who operate in the Internet domain. The challenges faced by these companies are unique and deals more with market penetration and  creating a level playing field. Internally we did some brainstorming and came up with the idea of forming a core group constituting of companies who operate out of this space. The idea was to create a platform which can be used as a sounding board and an opportunity for sharing of best practises.

Innovation Initiative: This initiative aims to catalyse innovation in India through specific programs, awards and a special fund.

Product Forum: The forum works towards encouraging product development in India by providing relevant industry information, facilitate exchange of ideas, identify issues related to marketing, branding, investments and IP (Intellectual Property) creation and protection.

Quality Forum: The key objective of the forum is to provide India with next generation leadership in the Quality domain.

Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) Forum: The forum aims to build India’s capability in the offshore Infrastructure management space through market development and enhancing talent supply.

Institution Building: NASSCOM has catalyse development of two organisations, to focus on CSR and data security

NASSCOM Foundation

NASSCOM Foundation (NF) was instituted with the aim to use information and communication technologies for development (ICT for D) and to catalyse the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arena within the Indian IT industry. Through the implementation of the diverse range of programmes NASSCOM Foundation is addressing its goal of taking information and communication tools to underserved communities across the country as well as channelising the immense potential of the IT industry towards socio-economic development of the nation.

Data Security Council of India (DSCI)

DSCI is a not-for-profit organization, established with the key objective of building a credible and committed body to uphold a high level of data privacy and security standards. The Mission of DSCI is to create trustworthiness of Indian companies as global sourcing service providers, and to send out a message to clients worldwide that India is a secure destination for outsourcing where privacy and protection of customer data are enshrined in the global best practices followed by the industry.

Updated on: 11 Sep, 2009