• The number of IT-BPO professionals employed in India grew from less than 200,000 people in 1998 to over 1.6 million in 2007, largely because of the country’s demographic profile and network of high-quality academic institutions.
• India currently has around 347 institutes of higher education and 16,885 colleges with a total enrollment of over 9.9 million. These produce around 495,000 technical graduates, nearly 2.3 million other graduates and over 300,000 post-graduates every year.
• Even at current levels of employability, India has the largest pool of suitable offshore talent, accounting for 28 percent of the total suitable pool available across all offshore destinations.
• India’s emergence as a preferred outsourcing destination has created the need for about 2.3 million professionals by 2010. Based on current estimates, a shortage of 0.5 million skilled knowledge workers may arise if remedial action is not taken. (Source Nasscom, India)

Way forward lies in strengthening the supply of skilled persons required for the growth of IT- BPO industry, which is an undisputed employment and wealth creator. Such plan incidentally would wisely use the India’s demographic advantage as working population in the age group 15-64 is expected to maintain growth till 2035 far longer than Japan and China. Working population in these two countries is expected to fall. This conclusion is supported as the average age of the population in India is projected to reach 29 whereas the same is projected at 37 in China and US, 45 in Western Europe and 47 in Japan. Such skewed population distribution is on account of the growth and the reproduction far exceeding the replacement needs. Further good communication infrastructure in India, English speaking population and large number of graduates trained by the local education institutions are all in place to welcome new and additional businesses in IT and BPO sector.

However this sector needs to address its concerns about suitability of the persons who are being available for employment. It is therefore essential that the training at the graduate level need to be oriented to meet the sector’s need for quality personnel.

NASSCOM has a comprehensive approach to this issue. It addresses the skill sets required at base of the employment pyramid where person usually are required in large number to perform millions of transaction processing, typically in a BPO type operation, networking, hardware maintenance etc  at the entry or lowest level. At the middle levels are the programmers, project leaders, project managers required to deliver the IT projects or complicated data migration or transaction processing. At the top of the pyramid the industry needs research oriented and highly knowledgeable persons who can drive drug research, bio informatics, product architecture, VLSI, Multi media convergence etc where skills are required in the domain as well as the IT area to deliver cutting edge solutions to the clients.

NASSCOM has recommended establishing of 20 new Indian Institute of Information Technology in India to the Ministry of Human Resources Development.

The aim of these institutions will be to:

• generate cutting-edge research and technology
• enhance and produce competent professionals and engineers
• incubate new companies and clusters
• nurture existing clusters of knowledge-based companies

These institutes will train students and impart quality education in the skill sets that are deficient in IT – BPO industry today. These institutes are proposed to be autonomous with private partnership so that they can adapt to the changing demands from the IT sector. They will facilitate quality research and enable the students to pursue doctoral degrees by creating research infrastructure within them.

At the Middle level NASSCOM has initiated steps to help the aspiring IT employees by stepping up certification efforts providing the testing and accreditation programs and running finishing schools to upgrade the IT job seekers quality. The finishing schools are now in operation at eight centers. These initiatives are strengthened by workshops and meets to address the needs of educators and also kindle interest in specialized areas.

NASSCOM is addressing the upgrading of skill sets of entry level workers with assessment of competence (NAC). This approach will help the industry to boldly step into tier II and tier III towns. NAC is expected to be extended to all the states and provide an opportunity to the young people to evaluate themselves. The trainable population will be turned into an employable population by this initiative. NAC will also help the educational institutions to align their curriculum with the needs of the IT- BPO industry.

What does this mean to the investors?

Investors will now have more opportunities to participate in education segment of IT-BPO industry as the education and training is being attempted to be developed through joint partnerships with private sector. India desperately needs investment in education to retain the edge it has in this sector and as an employment avenue for its growing young population till population stabilizes.  Investors can look forward to continued growth of IT-BPO sector, extending more investments.