The delegates, at the three-day annual conference of National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) from January 27 to 29, will also discuss financing of software companies through venture capital funding and devising strategies for moving up the value chain. Other items on the agenda include emergence of electronic government and its market in India, ERP market and implementation and IT opportunities in the financial services sector with increasing bank computerisation.

"Progressive recommendations made by the group on telecom relating to convergence of technologies, opening up of long-distance telephony, availability and expansion of bandwidth for a broad spectrum of operations, internet telephony and revenue-sharing herald a major opportunity for the softwareindustry.

Thus, we are keen to extensively cover a new gamut of opportunities which will soon become available to software companies due to changes in the offing," said Nasscom president Dewang Mehta.

As part of the conference, Nasscom will release a strategic review which will contain important statistics on the software industry. The prevailing attrition rate in the software industry is 17 per cent, while the average median age of Indian software professionals is 26.6 years, according to the survey. he industry is expected to employ more than 2.3 lakh people in the current year, it shows.

With the software industry shifting its focus to building a global brand equity rather than just banking upon offshore software development which, at present, exceeds 40 per cent of the total software exports from India, Nasscom is keen to give a big push to the second phase of consolidation.

The industry has set an annual export target of $50 billion by the year 2008 which was also recommended by the National ITTask Force. According to Mehta the study, recently awarded by Nasscom to McKinsey & Co for suggesting ways to restructure the software industry, is likely to be released within three months.

``McKinsey will chalk out strategies for increasing India's role in emerging opportunities in E-commerce and IT enabled services, internet, software engineering, Euro and enterprise resource planning,'' he said.

The study will also make a forecast on software exports in the next decade. As per Nasscom's estimates, the industry would register software exports worth Rs 11,000 crore at the end of the present fiscal, whereas domestic sales revenues are likely to be about Rs 5,200 crore.

As part of the annual conference, Nasscom will announce a national contest for creating a logo for the software industry. A special booklet encapsulating Nasscom's vision on the software industry in the next decade will be released which will contain articles by celebrity writers. Besides, Nasscom is also commissioning a filmhighlighting achievements of the industry.

Nasscom will also donate 5,000 internet-enabled personal computers to several schools and physically handicapped children. The donations are being made as part of Nasscom's special campaign for 100 per cent literacy to coincide with its 10th anniversary celebrations.