Indian industry need diversification in services: Commerce Secretary

The Indian industry needs to diversify its services exports beyond the two dominant segments of IT/ITeS and professional services to achieve sustainable growth, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal said here on Wednesday.

Addressing a session at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, he also said the global financial services is growing and stand at around $670 billion, but India’s share is just $8 billion, which is just over one per cent of the global trade. “Fintechs here can make the change...Out of the $8 billion, 95 per cent is digitally delivered financial services... Services which are delivered cross-border sitting back in your country, so that is probably the strength of India and that is where we are growing. So now it is the time... we need to be diversified through use of technology,” he said.

He added that the country’s services exports are registering healthy growth. Out of the total $863 billion exports in 2025-26, $421 billion was contributed by the services segment. The secretary said that one of the key challenges of the country’s services exports growth story has been that it is more concentrated on two pillars — IT/ITeS and professional services. IT/ITeS-based services account for about 50 per cent of India’s total exports, while professional services constitute another 30 per cent. “So these are the two pillars on which our services exports are based right now but it needs diversification if we have to grow and if we have to grow sustainably for a long period of time, we need diversification,” Agarwal said.

He added that India has the potential to provide a bouquet of services to the world. He also suggested to look at ways to reduce transactions and cost of remittances. The global cross-border payment market is about $182-190 billion and it is projected to reach $350-360 billion by 2032. Similarly, the cards and payments, which at present is around $1 trillion, is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2028-29.