Nasscom chairperson and Cognizant India CMD Rajesh Nambiar says over 3.32 lakh tech jobs have been posted in Q1 FY24 and this is evidence of the fact the industry is not shrinking. Speaking to Financial Express, Nambiar observed the demand environment was a cautious one.
“Macro uncertainty and recessionary fears has resulted in some clients delaying decisions. This will probably continue for a few more quarters. But we see a lot of green shoots in artificial intelligence (AI) adoption and emerging technologies,” he added.
Companies, he said, are focused on enhancing utilisation and are shifting to just-in-time hiring. Citing the hiring data –during FY17 and FY18 the net headcount added was 0.5 million while in FY22 and FY23, it was about 0.74 mn—Nambiar said demand for talent was reasonably strong. Today, the IT industry employs about 5.5 million employees.
The industry, he said, is seeing good growth in the BPM (business process management), ER&D (engineering, research & development) and GCCs (global capability centres) spaces with companies are setting up operations in India.
The AI boom, according to Nambiar, will depend on several factors. Apart from the data needed for Generative AI, mega computing power too would be needed. Also, AI would require both funds and talent. He believes we need to invest in and develop and promote large and trustworthy AI models to cater to the language and cultural diversity. He suggests a national GPU cloud with exaflop AI capacity be set up, with subsidies for Indian academia and startups.
Moreover, computing access would also be critical. “We can think of setting up special economic AI clusters, on the lines of SEZs,” he said. “We also need to think about how we can create sectoral AI which will have immediate use cases and can be translated into more benefits right away,” he said.
Nambiar said diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a business imperative, adding 80% of IT companies have DEI policies and 72% have dedicated budgets. “As an industry, we are the largest employer of women who comprise 36% of the total workforce. The industry added 0.14 mn employees in FY23, taking the total to 2 million. Not just big companies — 18% of all startups and 20% of all unicorns have at least one woman as a founder or co-founder,” he pointed out.
Nambiar feels campus hiring can bridge the talent gap. “We will soon see more companies getting back to colleges to hire. Every industry today is becoming a tech industry. And there is significant talent shortage. Campuses have been industry’s main source to hire and train people,” he said.