Nasscom, the IT industry body has planned to slash its membership fees in order to become more inclusive and easily accessible to smaller firms that have the talent and potential to become the next big thing.
The IT industry body which boosts of IT service heavy weights like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Service as its members has plans of reaching out to the smaller firms by slashing its membership fees to about a third of the current rates prevailing for the early stage firms. They even plan to shower these small firms with a host of benefits. This could also result in the bringing of product companies with just a prototype and limited or zero revenue into its fold for the very first time.
According to Ravi Gururaj, chairman of a Nasscom council, the benefits that these small firms will receive by associating themselves with Nasscom will help them lighten the membership cost and even allow the product companies to be part of the IT body.
The membership fee for regular members in Nasscom is based on the gross IT-BPM revenues of the previous fiscal year and as far as start-ups are concerned, the subscription is based on the estimated turnover of the current fiscal year. In addition to the subscription fee, there is an annual Newsletter and mailer charges of Rs.4800 which needs to be paid.
Currently, a company with a Rs.10,000 crore plus turnover needs to pay an annual subscription fees of Rs.60 lakh to be a part of the IT body and the companies with a turnover of less than Rs.1 crore are required to shell out Rs. 15,000 for the subscription.
Nasscom is also planning on playing an enabling role in new areas such as mobile and products and Internet.
This step taken by the IT body will help the smaller companies who always wanted to join Nasscom but couldn't because of the cost factor. Earlier these companies preferred in spending whatever little money which they had on marketing or product development rather than using it for the subscription fee. The reduced membership will let these small firms reap in all the benefits of Nasscom’s events and networking and also give them a taste of what an ecosystem can do for them.
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