Software companies seek tweak in local value addition norms

Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and other global software companies have sought a change in “local value addition” norms for software, claiming that they are unable to bid for government contracts since there are no standards to determine software localisation, people aware of the matter told ET.

In a letter to the ministry of electronics and information technology in July, BSA India–the Indian arm of a software alliance comprising the companies mentioned earlier and others like Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Salesforce, Autodesk and Slack–said these companies find it difficult to bid for or list their products and services on the government’s GEM (government e-marketplace) portal as they are unable to determine or define “local value addition”.