The purpose of STPI (Software Technology Parks of India), as stated on their website is to “promote the development and export of software and software services”. Under the STPI scheme, a software firm can get a ten year tax holiday on their profits from export of software and software-related services. The tax holiday scheme is obviously to promote and encourage the software export business, and has been quite successful. According to NASSCOM estimates, the IT and BPO sector accounts for around 6% of India's GDP in 2009 and 2010. However, a troubling trend has been that these Indian software firms have been concentrating largely on software services, rather than invest in software products. A quick look at TCS and Infosys' revenue break up from Q3 2011 (Sep 30, 2011) and 2010 whole year, respectively, reveals this disproportionate skew towards services.
To
understand the reason for this services-skew, it may be necessary to
first define how a software product and a software service differ. A
software product is, essentially, licensed. The buyer does not get the
intellectual property rights to the software, but a license to use
it. The seller of the software product is still responsible for
defending the IPR in the software, as well as indemnifying
the buyer of any infringement claims by a third party. A software
service, on the other hand, does not involve any kind of licensing.
It is a pure sub-contracting of software activities from the buyer to
the provider of these services. In these cases, usually, the service
provider does not own any intellectual property rights to the
software being delivered. The service provider gets paid as the
service is being produced.
