Bangalore: Pakistan's IT industry is looking at India to lead the South Asian region in spreading its success in IT outsourcing to its neighbours.

"India should play a role what Japan did for the South East Asian region. We are looking for India to take a lead in the IT sector in the region," Pakistan IT industry body, Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA) Secretary and CEO, iWays Pvt Ltd, Nadeem Aslam Malik told reporters in Bangalore today (Feb 6, 2004).

A PASHA delegation on an India visit attended the NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) summit in Mumbai and today made a trip to software majors Infosys, Wipro, Digital and vMokhsha Technologies to learn from the Indian software success story and help spur growth of the IT industry back home.

"Lot of technologies are proven; models are proven. How can we really cut down on that time, when outsourcing was at a very infant stage when India started. We are looking at how we can manage this and put our name on the IT map," he said.

The $ 100 million Pakistan software industry with about 300 firms employs over 25,000 software professionals and aims to achieve one billion USD in the next two years, from both outsourcing and domestic business.

"We can leverage the hard work (of India) and with a good relationship, we can quickly jump on the bandwagon. In respect of human manpower, we are very much at par (with Indians)," PASHA Hon Secretary and Principal Consultant at Elysium, a software firm, Owais H Zaidi said.

As the two neighbours are improving their relations, PASHA is offering a "reciprocal" approach for Indian IT firms to tap its talent to offer services to the globe.

"You (Indian firms) can access the talent pool, which may not be utilised by our IT industry and they can be deployed by your firms," Malik said, adding the late start in the 1990s by Pakistan has helped it to bridge technology gaps.

Though Pakistan and India do not have any barriers for software firms to invest in either countries, PASHA believes, the respect the industry bodies (NASSCOM and PASHA) command may break any ice which can emerge.

Wipro President and Head Talent Transformation and Staffing Laxman Badiga, who provided a perspective on India's and Wipro's IT story, highlighted the need for building teams and people with soft skills who can deliver quality work for customers.

"You are no different from us. You have the same capacity to achieve them," Badiga told the PASHA team, which included Chairman of Autosoft Dynamics Lutfullah Khan, Streetware Systems CEO Asad Iqbal and 'Spider', Pakistan's Internet Magazine editor Zunaira Durrani.

"The seed (for peace) is sown. The best way to attain peace is economic co-dependence. If your gas line goes through Pakistan, you are not going to bomb the whole gas line; If we have some business interests in India, we are not going to bomb India...at the end, everything boils down to business economics," the young Zaidi said.