Sweden to emerge as a potential market for Indian IT-Sector

Sweden is set to emerge as a potential market for the Indian IT-BPM sector, a new report said on Thursday. The report by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), along with Business Sweden, a partly government-owned company, and research firm Radar Ecosystem, underlines key driving areas that make Sweden a potential IT hub that could be of special interest to Indian IT companies. “India and Sweden’s IT ecosystem have a mutual affinity for each other — with both the countries at the threshold of digitisation, opening multiple opportunities for the countries to collaborate,” said Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar in a statement. According to the report titled ‘Sweden a key driver of Nordic ICT growth’, Sweden has been identified as the country with 40 percent of the total share of the Nordic countries’ IT spend — that is $23 billion in 2016-17. The central market trend reflected in Sweden is the drive for digitisation just like Indian markets. Sweden currently has 150 percent smart device penetration, which is among the highest in Europe with 14.6 million devices and is witnessing the adoption of new delivery models, such as Cloud-computing and offshore delivery. Internet of Things (IoT) is also increasingly penetrating in the vehicle, health, banking and logistics space. The report predicted that the value of the consulting market is expected to grow by 3.6 percent to a total value of $6.65 billion by 2017. Sweden has adopted a ‘Digital First’ strategy similar to ‘Digital India’ which aims to create a public e-government system that meets citizen, organisation and private sector expectations. The country is home to several notable companies like Truecaller, Candy Crush, Skype and Spotify, the report said.