Are there any Indian software product companies?

I read somewhere (numbers may not be exactly correct): "India produces nearly 3,50,000 Engineers per year. Whole of Europe produces 1,00,000 Engineers a year and US produces only 70,000". I also read, " Many bright Indian minds (are we??) opt for computer job to become part of the Indian IT industry."

What are Indian best tech companies? Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam and HCL. How many of these tech companies influenced the technology world? Answer is none. India didn't create IBM (that defined PC standard), Microsoft (cause for worlds popular Operating system), HP (famous for printers, enterprise servers), Google (you cant imagine world without search) or Sun (the inventor of Java).

The evident difference between these companies is that the former are service companies and later are mainly product companies. I am not undermining any Indian IT services companies. They achieved a lot so far. They helped build an Indian brand, brought global work cultures, introduced corporate governance. They are globally successful companies. But my point is they are not innovating enough.

Well, some of you might be wondering, what is the difference between service company and product company. Service company sells service. It creates software that is for a specific situation with relatively low level of leverage and reuse. Product company builds products that are useful for wide range of customers.

I agree that there are few software product companies in India, but they are small size. I feel that the time has come for Indian product companies. India has a very good brand value. Now for a good product idea, there are funds available in India and it is getting better everyday. And also many Indians with good product design experience are returning home.

But product companies are risky (normally only 4% succeed). Product companies need a higher level of innovation, higher technical abilities. But bigger risks always leads to bigger rewards.

Finally there is another question. Instead of building new product companies in India, is it possible to transform the existing big services companies into product companies? My answer is No. Its very tough because, a software services business is very different from a software product business. It will have different financing, different client interaction, different goals and different decisions. But there are few companies that made this transition before; Oracle is one such company.