By Govindraj Ethiraj

Copyright thecore

The year 2000 or Y2K as it is fondly remembered, was a turning point for the Indian information technology (IT) services industry.A global scare that computers would freeze up on the night of December 31, 1999 triggered waves of anticipatory business for Indian IT companies. As January 1, 2000 came and went, the computers transitioned without any incident. No planes fell out of the sky, as some had warned.The Indian IT sector proved its mettle in keeping systems for critical functions across the world running, from banking to telecom to retail. Whether anything would have happened at all when the computer clocks transitioned, we would never know. But Indian IT got a solid foot into the global IT services market.Soon, questions were asked about what was next. Would Indian IT be able to sustain the momentum that Y2K created? What is the future for TCS and Infosys? Not that it would cease to exist, but could the industry grow like it had so far, and stay relevant?The $224 billion industry faced several near-death moments, including the global financial crisis in 2008 and the shift to digital a few years ago. The industry survived and grew.To the point that along with BPO, according to some estimate…