The Industry continues to be a net hirer of skilled talent, adding 138,000 people in FY2021, and robust hiring plans for FY22 with the top 5 Indian IT companies planning to add over 96,000 employees, claims a recent statement by Nasscom.
The IT body issued the statement to clarify that another recent report by Bank of America (BofA) Securities revealed that the Indian IT/BPO companies could see 30% reduction in low-skilled jobs globally by 2022 due to robotic process automation upskilling. This, the report said, translates to 3 million jobs losses.
Nasscom said, it wants to put things in perspective around hiring and job creation in the sector, stating that the global report can made false claims on the matter.
The BofA report alleged, while domestic IT sector employs around 16 million (as per Nasscom’s estimate) around 9 million are employed in low-skilled services and BPO roles. “TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra and Cognizant and others appear to be planning for a 3 million reduction in low-skilled roles by 2022 because of RPA up-skilling,” the report said.
In response, Nasscom said in a statement, “With the evolution of technology and increasing automation, the nature of traditional IT jobs and roles will evolve overall leading to creation of newer jobs. The Industry continues to be a net hirer of skilled talent, adding 138,000 people in FY2021.”
The BPM sector in India, which has been called out as the sector ripe for automation, employs over 1.4 million people (excluding domestic and in-house) and not 9 million as the report suggests. The IT-BPM sector overall employs 4.5 million people as of March 2021.
Around 33% of the total jobs in the BPM sector are related to customer interaction services (e.g. call center work including mail, chat etc). Most of the customer work from India is now being done in an omni-channel model and involves higher end expertise with technology and automation already built into the processes, the IT industry body clarified.
Automation and RPA has been maturing in the last 3 years and has led to a net creation of jobs for the BPM sector. The addressable opportunity for BPM according to a Nasscom-McKinsey Report is $180-220 billion, leaving significant headroom for growth and jobs.
BPO industry in India is constantly innovating on reimagining processes for global customers – building products, leverage analytics, customer experience and the announcement by all companies showcases the growth in a pandemic year and opportunity ahead.
Indian IT firms also saw record deal wins during the pandemic. According to a report, TCS clocked deals worth a record $9.2 billion in Q4 FY21, its highest ever in a quarter amid a total of over $31.5 billion over the last fiscal; Infosys won $14 billion in total, with over 60 percent in net new deals and Wipro signed 12 large deals with the total contract value of $1.4 billion in Q4 FY21. Also, hundreds of are jobs are up for grabs and companies are willing to pay premium to attract and retain quality talent.
With one of the strongest deal pipeline, and strong business outlook, the industry is on track to meet its vision of $300-350Bn revenues by 2025. The IT industry body believes, the Industry will continue to be a net creator of jobs and is committed to people-centric innovation, relentless talent focus, and delivering a superior transformative customer experience.
