Today, the Reserve Bank released the data¹ related to the 2021-22 round of its annual survey on computer software and information technology enabled services exports. The survey² collects details on India’s exports of software services {computer services and information technology enabled services (ITES)/business process outsourcing (BPO) services} as per type of activity, on-site/off-site nature of services, country of destination and four modes of supply.

For 2021-22 round of the survey, 6,218 software export companies were contacted, of which 2,074 companies, including most of the large companies, responded. The responding companies accounted for 89.4 per cent of the total software services exports³ during the year (Table 1).

Highlights:

• India’s exports of software services (excluding exports through commercial presence) are estimated to have increased by 17.2 per cent to US$ 156.7 billion during 2021-22 (Table 2).

• Computer services continued to account for over two-thirds of total software services exports.

• BPO services accounted for nearly 84 per cent of exports of information technology (IT) enabled services (Table 3).

• Private limited companies accounted for 60 per cent of the total exports of software services whereas exports by public limited companies declined during the year (Table 4).

• The United States and Canada were the top destination for software exports with 55.5 per cent share, followed by Europe, of which, nearly half was attributed to the United Kingdom (Table 5).

• The US dollar remained the principal invoicing currency for software exports, followed by the Euro and Pound sterling (Table 6).

• The share of off-site mode of exports of software services continued to increase and stood at 88.8 per cent in 2021-22 as compared with 82.8 per cent five years ago (Table 7).

• In terms of modes of supplying services, the share of Mode-1 (cross-border supply) in India’s exports of software services increased further to 80.9 per cent in 2021-22; the share of other three modes of delivery (viz., consumption abroad; commercial presence; and presence of natural persons) declined (Table 8).

• Total exports of software services, including services delivered by foreign affiliates of Indian companies, increased by 15.9 per cent during 2021-22 and stood at US$ 171.9 billion; local software business by foreign affiliates stood at US$ 15.2 billion, with the United States being the major destination (Tables 8, 9 and 10).

(Yogesh Dayal)     
Chief General Manager

Press Release: 2022-2023/840

¹ The previous data release in the series, covering 2020-21 survey round, was published on September 20, 2021 on the RBI website.

² The survey schedule is given in the Annex.

³ Exports of relatively small non-responding companies have been estimated as per the methodology published in the article titled ‘Survey on Computer Software and Information Technology Enabled Services Exports: 2016-17’ on March 2018 issue of the RBI Bulletin.