And so the 1972 Software Export Scheme was born. The scheme set out to harness the software programming talent within India's management consultancies. While providing software services was by no means the chief source of income for these consultancies, they would often have on their books a number of people educated in computer software and would lease them out to Business Houses to write specific software programs. This process - an early, domestic form of body-shopping - was widespread [...]

The scheme sought to transform these management consultancies with a side interest in software services provision into bona fide software firms competing in the global market. [...] providing 100 per cent loans on computer purchases to all firms that signed up. Given the small size of such firms and the prohibitive costs of computers at the time, this was the only means by which firms could gain access to their own computers [...] it needed to ensure that firms would use these computers to produce software for export rather than for the domestic market. As such, firms signing up to the scheme were prohibited from providing services to the domestically installed hardware base. Moreover, loans had to be repaid through foreign exchange generated only via the export of software. [...]