Infotech Lead India: IT employment in India is looking up in 2013 as IT Capex to grow 8 percent globally.
According to Gartner, IT investment in Asia Pacific is likely to touch $743 billion in 2013, up 7.9 percent over 2012. The devices segment (including PCs, tablets, mobile phones & printers) in Asia Pacific is projected to reach $229.7 billion. This estimate is up 12.3 percent from spending in 2012. IT services are predicted to reach $91.5 billion, up by 7.5 percent.
“As global markets improve in 2013 and resume growth, Asia Pacific remains one of the bright spots of the global IT market, allowing organizations in this region to accelerate competitiveness,” said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner senior vice president and global head of research.
Asian companies, particularly in China and India are expected to make significant investments in major Western markets through 2015. These organizations will also be responsible for major hiring of IT professionals.
Of the 4.4 million IT jobs which will be created to support big data globally by 2015, around 960,000 will be in the Asia Pacific region. For every big data-related role, three people outside of IT will get employment too, according to Gartner.
According to the Naukri Job Speak Index, the overall outlook for hiring trends of 2013 within the IT industry seem to indicate continued upturns and positive growth after last year’s sluggish movement. The IT and software industry has registered a double digit growth in hiring numbers for January 2013. Things are expected to slowly pick up in the coming months.
Capgemini recently announced it is planning to hire around 28,000 people in India to revive its offshore consulting services. The $13.5-billion worth Capgemini has currently a third of its employees working in India.
Dell recently announced plans to expand in India. Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell refused to comment about the company’s hiring and expansion plans in figures but said that if the business gets bigger, Dell would certainly continue expanding its operations in India.
Globally, Dell has a headcount of more than one lakh people of which currently 27,000 people are employed in its manufacturing plant at Chennai.
Hiring Challenges
Commenting on the latest trends in hiring IT talents, Capgemini India CEO Aruna Jayanthi said India has enough talent but the challenge likes in hiring people who have a strong understanding of business and how technology facilitates business.
Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-chairman of Cognizant, observes that salary levels of engineering graduates had been almost flat in the last three to four years. Also some companies have started hiring non-engineering graduates for some of the engineering roles. This, according to Narayanan, could put further pressure on IT professional’s salary.
The IT sector offers Rs 2.5-5 lakh as salaries for entry level engineers, the median salary being Rs 3.5 lakh. Every year, India produces around 10 lakh engineering graduates. Of these, 2 lakh are recruited by IT companies, Times of India reported.
N Chandrasekaran, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), said TCS typically does 60 percent of its yearly hiring from campuses. According to him, overall hiring has slowed because supply has exceeded the demand. Further, over the last two years, growth rate has not been good and the utilization levels have come down.
Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar Technologies, also accentuates that hiring demand looks dull as supply had exceeded demand. “Entry level salaries could remain flat. There is a perception that industry salaries went up by 12 percent this fiscal, but the reality is that it has gone up by 6 percent and entry-level salaries have been flat,” he said.
Despite these, recent industry reports suggest that growth in domestic IT demand is likely to outperform software exports this year, driven by high adoption of technology among local companies and governments. Indian IT market is predicted to grow by 14.1 percent with a worth of around $20 billion in 2012-13, compared to 10.2 percent growth in exports at $75.8 billion.
“Efficiency through transformation of operations with technology remains a very important focus for global organizations. There is also a tremendous focus on adoption of digital, which are combinations of technologies like mobile, social media, analytics, cloud and big data,” N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Nasscom, said at the IT industry body’s India Leadership Forum 2013.
