The Indian software industry has added just 170,000 new jobs (600,000 in the last 3 years) in fiscal 2017.
The Indian software industry has a total employee base of 3.9 million including 95-100k in start-ups and 50-60K in eCommerce.
“While there is a gentle deceleration in the net hiring growth rate due to shifting focuses towards innovation, lower attrition and enhanced efficiencies, the IT sector continues to hire fresh as-well-as lateral employees in equal proportion thus indicating the opportunities for employment at the entry as well as the mid-management level,” said Nasscom.
The industry association said workforce realignment is common to any industry and is a part of the regular exercise of yearly performance appraisal processes which only impacts 0.5-3 percent of the overall IT talent pool.
The main focus for Indian software companies will be on skills and proficiency levels rather than scale. It is becoming imperative for employees (both current and potential) to skill themselves in domain specific requirements.
“Both skilling and talent re-deployment are part of a regular yearly cycle, as this enable companies to remain competitive. Companies evaluate their priorities based on the business needs and work towards making the necessary changes in their workforce planning,” said Raman Roy, chairman of NASSCOM.
Many firms have established programs to re-skill their existing employees and India today boasts of over 300,000 such experts. Top companies have reskilled an average 50 percent of their employee base.
“The need for re-skilling talent is a reality that we have to address. To keep up in a fast-evolving technology environment, the IT industry must reinvent itself by re-skilling its employees in new and upcoming technologies,” said R Chandrashekhar, president of NASSCOM.
