Notwithstanding the decline in the number of jobs in IT sector as a result of emerging and disruptive technologies, new jobs were being created in several other sectors that rely on technology, said B.V.R. Mohan Reddy, Board Member of National Skill Development Corporation (Implementing body of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship) and the Chairman of IT-ITes Sector Skill Council.
Mr. Reddy is also former NASSCOM Chairman and Founder and Executive Chairman, Cyient.
Closely associated with the recently-launched IT body’s Future Skills Platform, Mr. Reddy said the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has identified eight new technologies that include Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual and augmented reality, IoT, 3D printing, big data analytics, drones etc that could drive IT jobs in future.
“The emerging eight technologies are not carved in stone though. Their relevance will be reviewed from time to time and new technologies may be added while some may be dropped,” he added.
Talking to The Hindu , he said NASSCOM has identified 55 new jobs and 155 new skills that would be in demand in future and has a plan to reskill and upskill at least 60% of the existing 40 lakh IT workforce in the emerging technologies in three to five years. The massive reskilling of employees would be done through a Learning Management Platform. “A top learning management company has been roped in to provide the service.” Mr. Reddy said.
Emphasising that NASSCOM was only playing the role of a facilitator, he said the Learning Management Platform, powered by AI tools, can create customised content for each person in an IT company depending on his or her skill level and expertise. The person would have to take the test every week and based on the performance, the next week’s content would be customised for him or her. “We are quite proud of this platform as it can monitor the learning process of an individual and expedite the upskilling and reskilling process when NASSCOM is looking to reorient the existing IT workforce to have that competitive edge,” he said.
The concern over lower number of IT jobs is intelligible given the net additional employment generated by the IT industry this year – about 100,000 – compared to 300,000 jobs about five to seven years ago. “The revenue growth is pegged at seven to eight %, but if one looked at the volume of additional revenue of $12 billion to $13 billion generated by the IT industry this year, it is still significant,” pointed out Mr. Reddy. On concerns over job losses, he said the new disruptive technologies were bringing in sizeable automation reducing the number of people deployed for an end-to-end solution process in the IT industry. But indirect jobs were being created every day elsewhere, thanks to IT platforms. For instance, an e-commerce website may not employ many people being a software platform, but for the delivery of products and services at the door step of consumers, new jobs were created in logistics, provisioning, ordering and supply chain management system.
The challenges of new technologies should be understood in terms of accelerating computing power that revolutionised the communication capabilities between machine to machine. The third phenomenon driving the disruption are sensors in miniature form that could be deployed anywhere and everywhere to monitor physiological parameters, to a machine or to an aircraft to record all kinds of data. Making sense of the ocean of data sent back to the servers by these sensors has led to another disruptive technology – the Artificial Intelligence – which is the interplay of computing power, communication, sensors and the ability to write algorithms to make meaning out of data, he explained.
