India may be currently facing a huge scramble for digital talent, but the good news is that the country is well placed with a lowest tech talent demand supply gapwhen compared to major economies including the U.S., U.K. and China, said industry body Nasscom.
“India’s tech talent demand supply gap at 21.1% is the lowest compared to other major economies,” said Sangeeta Gupta, Senior VP and Chief Strategy Officer, Nasscom. “The increasing pool of graduates coupled with a maturing talent ecosystem is helping the growth of digital talent pool in the country despite the churn for the right talent.”
Talent continues to remain a key advantage for Indian IT. In FY22, the country’s technology industry employed more than 5.1 million people of which some 1.6 million were digitally skilled, she said.
“India has emerged as an unparalleled human capital destination being the ‘digital talent nation’ to the world, with Indian IT being the flag bearer,” Ms. Gupta added.
In order to maintain this growth trend, the tech industry has been pursuing internal reskilling programmes and collaborations with EdTech companies to train their employees and develop the future workforce in digital skills.
“Our digital tech talent is growing 5x faster compared to core IT talent. Notably, digital talent supply across key digital skills such as cloud computing, AI, big data analytics and IoT has increased at a CAGR of over 20% in the last five years,” Ms. Gupta noted.
For India to retain its leadership in the digital era, it must not only look at strategies aimed at increasing home-grown talent but must also work on attracting the best global talent to catalyse the next decade of growth and innovation, she said.
“We need to ramp up our talent strategies to build digital capabilities in smaller towns, get more women to join the workstream with hybrid work norms, revamp vocational education from ITI and polytechnics, incentivise skilling and explore innovative learning modules through government certification,” Ms. Gupta observed.
