COVID-19 impact on Indian IT can be different from 2008 financial crisis

Clearly, there are no parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent history. But if one has to draw inferences from an event of this scale, then the experience during the global financial crisis of 2008 provides some hope for India’s IT services companies.

Indian IT exports’ growth fell from about 30% in FY08 to 16.8% in FY09 and 5.8% in FY10, data collated by Nomura Research shows. But as financial markets stabilised, IT exports bounced back, aided by market share gains.

Growth rates have been considerably lower since FY11 compared to pre-crisis levels, but this is largely because of the base effect.