Nasscom creates health insurance plan for IT companies

Bangalore: In what may be a first of its kind initiative by an industry body, Nasscom has created a health insurance plan in association with Oriental Insurance for the 2.5 million people industry.

Insurance premiums come down when more people are part of a plan, and given the scale of the IT sector, Nasscom's Techie-Health Plan will bring down substantially the cost of providing insurance especially for small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Nasscom said over 200 companies have already committed to join the plan. The association's target is to bring 1,000 SMBs under the scheme in 15 months.

"The scheme offers a 30% to 50% cost savings to companies with up to 100 employees. It will have a cover of up to Rs 3 lakh for employees and their spouses and children,'' said Sangeeta Gupta, senior V-P, Nasscom. There are different kinds of plans, and the cost of the plan for a 100-employee company would vary between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 9.5 lakh based on the plan.

The employees will not have to pay any premium unless they want to top up the plan for more benefits. Depending on the plan, three to seven family members will be covered. The plan is fairly comprehensive, covering even pre-existing ailments, maternity and new-borns.

Insurance broking company Medimanage and third party administrator Mediassist will also be involved in implementing the scheme.

Healthcare costs have risen phenomenally, especially in private hospitals, making insurance almost a necessity for middle class Indians, who seek better healthcare services. "Employee health and wellness is a key priority for the industry. We will have roadshows across the country to popularize this health insurance plan,'' said Gupta.

Nasscom sees strong spurt in tech demand

New Delhi: Technology industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) sees a strong revival of demand that could not only help meet, but even exceed, growth expectations for 2011-12. Newly-appointed Nasscom chairman for 2011-12, Rajendra S Pawar said in an interaction with ET: "We are coming back to growth levels seen prior to the slowdown and in the near term we see lot of headroom to catapult this growth.''

When asked whether this means Nasscom will revise its 15-17 % growth target for the year for the $70 billion technology and business services sector, Pawar said, "it's too early to comment, but we are on track to exceed this target.'' Pawar, 60, co-founder and chairman of education software company, NIIT , took over as Nasscom chairman from Harsh Manglik. Nasscom also appointed N Chandrasekaran as vice-chairman of it's executive council. Chandrasekaran is CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services , the largest Indian technology services company.

As chairman of the executive council, Pawar will lead and assist Nasscom in catalysing the growth of the Indian IT-BPO industry and enabling the sfulfilment of its future goals and aspirations. Towards this end, Pawar wants to focus on two areas. First, how Nasscom will facilitate growth of the small and mid-sized companies. "There are a lot of SMEs focused on software products, telecom, internet space, all driven by intellectual property. By the end of this decade we see quite a few of them becoming very big,'' Pawar said. And second, 'IT for India', that is, how Nasscom can help in e-governance projects. "Government technology initiatives are beginning to get critical mass. We will engage with these projects and see what opportunity is available to companies,'' he added. Besides, Nasscom will push for private sector partnerships in e-governance projects.

On sops to industry, particularly for SMEs, Pawar said, "we will align with the new direct tax code. The new tax regime is supportive of growth and will help the industry.'' Pawar takes over at a time, when on the one hand the industry is coping with quality of talent issues and on the other, later in the year, could see a return of the anti-offshoring wave, as build up for the US elections starts. On strategies to cope with these Mr Pawar said "talent is a big issue and industry will have to accelerate shifts to new models (like de-link revenue and manpower growth) and focus on innovation. On anti-offshoring , we will be engaging a lot more with various stakeholders.''