Indian IT sector growing, but faces stiff competition

India has established itself as the major offshoring destination for global IT companies.

BENGALURU: India has established itself as the major offshoring destination for global IT companies.  US $1 trillion opportunity is offered by the emerging technologies, Social, Mobility, Analytics and Clouds (SMAC) collectively. The global market is on the expansion.

The sector is expected to grow at a rate of 12 to 14 per cent for FY 2016-17 in constant currency terms. Annual current revenue is expected to be tripled to US $350 billion by FY 2025. I expect that there is a bright future in IT industry for foreseeable future, both in terms of growth in employment and revenue.

However, the paradigm has changed dramatically. The Indian IT industry is facing stiff competition from the outsourcing companies based in different parts of the world — China, Taiwan, Philippines, Eastern Europe and Latin America. There are tremendous emphasis on productivity, value additions, quality, customer experience, and effective communications, meeting the datelines, domain knowledge and agility.

The technologies are moving rapidly from traditional Java, .Net and  Mainframe, to Analytics, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Today a successful IT professional will be measured by his ability to adopt new technologies, not the number of years of experience.

The recent layoffs in some large companies in fact are symptoms of these profound changes. The layoff recently announced by a number of large IT companies will be the norms, rather than exceptions. IT companies (big and small) are facing tremendous pressure on cost, productivity and ROI.

They will have a significant group of employees in their payrolls, who can’t be trained to new business paradigms. Thus they will be forced to layoff a large group of employees who will not be able to adapt to new business requirements. 

On the other hand, the same companies will recruit employees who are proficient or will learn quickly the new technologies, and adapt to new business requirements. I have witnessed the same type of transformations in Silicon Valley, and other parts of USA. As “world is flat”, it has recently arrived in India. Companies do not offer any longer job securities - only customers do.

Asoke K Laha is the President and CEO of Interra Information Technologies