Nasscom looks for big biz in SMEs

New Chairman Natarajan puts IT exports growth at 14% Mumbai (PTI): Taking over as the new Nasscom Chairman, MindTree CEO K Natarajan said technology needs in India, driven by small and medium enterprises, presents a huge opportunity for the IT sector even as he expressed confidence of achieving 12-14 per cent growth in exports. He replaces TCS chief N Chandrasekaran as the chairman of the industry body, which represents the country's $100 billion Indian IT-BPO sector. Expressing confidence in meeting the target of 12-14 per cent growth in exports, which accounts for a huge chunk of the sector's revenues, he said: "Challenges like uncertainty in regions like Cyprus, and currency volatility and quality talent requirement continue, but we already have various programmes in place to address these issues." Natarajan has taken over as the chairman of Nasscom's Executive Council for 2013-14. Nasscom has also appointed R Chandrasekaran, Group Chief Executive (Technology and Operations) of Cognizant as its vice-chairman for the new fiscal. "There is a huge opportunity that can be leveraged to meet the domestic technology requirement. Small and medium enterprises will play an important role. We need to find out how SMEs can be catalysed to use technology and many of Nasscom members are already doing that," Natarajan said. "Stakeholders of Nasscom are diverse than what it was 10 years ago. New areas like products, Internet and mobility is what we are now focussing on, all of which represents big growth opportunity for the industry," he said.