The last two decades in India has witnessed a phenomenal growth in the area of Information Technology. Currently valued at US$ 143 billion, the Indian IT industry is expected to grow at a compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8.3% year-on-year and contribute 9.5 percent of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2017 generating revenues of over US$ 160 billion. Today the Indian IT industry employs more than 2 million people and its impact on the Indian economy and stakeholders, including customers and employees remain unparalleled.

As the world and India enters 2017, the Indian IT industry recognizes that the coming years will be fundamentally different from the last few years owing to not only a radically transforming global economy but also to the impact of evolving technologies like automation, robotics, etc, which are predicted to change the very dynamics of the Indian IT industry. Despite the challenging forecasts for the coming years, NASSCOM in its study paper ‘Perspective 2020’ has projected that the Indian IT industry will continue to remain pretty robust and retain its status as one of the growth engines of the Indian economy with ample job opportunities and challenges for sustained growth in the domestic as well as global markets.

All of these sounds good, but the question remains whether the Indian IT industry will continue to remain the sunshine sector with a healthy social impact that it was during the past two decades? Will it continue to live up to the expectations of the many hundreds of job-seekers who flood the Indian job market every year?

There has been some worrying news in recent months which do not bode well for the Indian IT industry as well as the job-seekers who look up to the IT industry for providing them a bright career opening. It has been reported that India’s top Information Technology companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which were expanding at a robust pace for the last two decades have today slowed down and still worse, have gone almost cold on the job front. For the first time in over two decades, two of India’s top IT companies, Wipro Ltd and HCL Technologies have reported a net decline in direct hiring while another top IT company, Tech Mahindra saw a decline in its existing workforce during the first half of 2016.

It was not just slow revenue growth but also the adoption of hot technologies like cloud computing and automation platforms (jobs that have started replacing engineers), that have contributed to slower job hiring process. While this in a way would help the IT companies to reduce their wage bill but at the same time would compel them to boost the training costs of existing employees. Further it is expected to hurt the future prospects of the many hundreds of IT engineers who graduate out of Indian educational institutes every year.

Job-Seekers Perspective and All That:

2016 was a mixed year for India for while its economy did extremely well amid worldwide economic slump, the year-end saw an abundance of cash-crunch thanks to demonetization, which had a devastating effect on some industries. The job-market according to some experts is said to heading for yet another gloomy year with employers in most companies including IT companies on ‘wait and watch’ mode and pay-hikes continuing to show a weak-trend.  Manoj Saxena, associated with IBM’s artificial intelligence program Watson, feels that the Indian IT companies are not geared well-enough to respond to the transformation that is expected to sweep the IT industry in the coming years for their focus has all-along been on their multi-billion dollar businesses. This in a way, he feels could imperil future IT jobs in India.

Some experts however disagree with this gloomy forecast. Former Infosys leader T V Mohandas Pai believes that though there is a change in the job-market in the offing, it is still three to five years away and India’s IT Companies are in a pretty good position to address the issues. 

Statistics show a different picture, according to one market-survey report, as per month-on-month analysis, hiring has seen lower growth in 2016 as compared to 2015, while actual salary increase was lower than the projected figures of 20 percent on the higher side, and above 10 percent on the average. This has been attributed to the Central Government’s demonetization move and the election of Donald Trump as US President; the impact is expected to stay that way for the first few early months of 2017. Experts however believe that though demonetization seems like a dampener as of now will eventually benefit the Indian economy and youth population by infusing more confidence among external investors and encourage them to set up shop or expand their business operations  thereby contributing to the Indian economy. This in turn, they believe will help create more formal jobs like never before in the latter half of 2017.

The real danger, the experts believe could be from Donald Trump’s election as the US President. With his emphasis on bringing jobs including IT jobs back to the US, his tough anti-immigrant stand and above all, his aversion for H-1B Visa, he could play a spoilsport and generate a negative impact on the Indian IT industry.

Another danger looming large on the horizon in the job-seekers perspective could be the impending arrival of automation, robotics and AI (Artificial Intelligence), all three of which are cutting through the IT job-market more rapidly than most could imagine. Former Infosys’s top man Mohandas Pai feels,” Today there are lots of people (middle-level managers) earning between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 70 lakh per year. Half of these managers would stand to lose their jobs in the next ten years due to automation.”  
  
This is indeed bad news for many reasons. For first, this could mean that even if India’s IT companies are able to retain their market share of software works in the coming years, the same is going to be automated which means less of working human resource is required.

IT Job Market in the Year Ahead & Further:

Even as the overall job market outlook looks a little bleak, experts believe that there is reason to still remain positive and upbeat about the IT job market in the coming years. Their optimism springs from the following facts:

• Railway Ministry is all set to give a massive digital push to the Indian Railways by introducing bar-coded tickets, GPS based information systems inside coaches, integration of all facilities dealing with ticketing issues, etc.
• World-class incubation centres to be set up by Central Government for ‘Internet of Things (IoT) start-ups, with at least two centres to be set-up in rural areas to develop solutions for smart agriculture.
• Digital India program to provide several Government services to the masses using IT and adoption of key IT technologies across sectors.
• Digital literacy program to be launched by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, aimed at training six crore Indians in the next three years to empower them for digital inclusion.
• Rising penetration of Internet (including in rural areas) and rapid emergence of e-commerce will be the main drivers for continued growth of data center co-location and hosting market in India.
• Public cloud market in India is expected to treble to US$ 1.9 billion by 2018.
• Healthcare IT market currently valued at US$ 1 billion is expected to grow 1.5 times by 2020.
• Business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce market is expected to reach US$ 102 billion by 2020 while that of B2B to US$ 700 billion by 2020.

In addition to the above, landmark Indian Government’s initiatives like Smart Cities, GST, etc, are all expected to provide impetus to job-growth, especially in the IT segment. 

That is good news for the job-seekers. They only need to upgrade their skills that are relevant to the times and be receptive to changes and challenges that come along in a fast-fluctuating marketplace.
 
Jobs to be hit by automation, robotics and AI, would in fact help create newer job-openings while demanding greater skills. Already there are reports of some companies in the US who have resorted to automation and robotics, complaining that they cannot find enough skilled workers in the US for their automated factories. Likewise, technology companies engaged in software development have also been complaining about shortages of skilled labour.

Road Ahead:

India continues to remain the topmost off-shoring destination for IT companies across the world. Having already proven its capabilities in delivering quality on-shore and off-shore services to global clients, emerging technologies now provide an entirely new gamut of opportunities for top IT companies in India.

This indicates that IT job-opportunities could continue to drive the demand for IT professionals with quality IT expertise coupled with strong business application skills. Skilled Job-performers as on now would not have much to worry as companies would begin to look at retaining quality talent and even enhancing their salary package rather than hiring new job talent and spending on training costs of new work employees. On the other hand, job-seekers could do well on elevating their skills that are relevant to changing times.