Hyderabad Software Enterprises’ Association (HYSEA) president Murali Bollu said while working on-site in IT companies abroad was becoming increasingly difficult, it does not mean the end of work for professionals.
In a freewheeling interview with The Hindu on Wednesday, Mr. Bollu said though job creation has slowed down, the IT sector in the country has clocked a growth rate of around 10.7%.
“More will be coming our way. And if people are being restricted from moving, work will have to travel where talent is, as long as we skill and re-skill our people here,” Mr. Bollu said.
He said the factors behind this was an ‘interaction’ between increasing efficiencies of companies, rapid maturing of new technologies and an increase in their adoption. While tightening of rules affects around 65,000 visas, a much larger number of professionals, he said, were required to work on convergence of technologies.
“Work is coming our way with or without H1-B,” he said. At a time when working on-site in the U.S.A. has become difficult, Mr. Bollu portended the opening up of avenues for Indian workers in other countries. Citing the case of Japan as a bright spot, he said, “Japan has become more open as there is a huge need to adopt new technologies. They do not have the workforce owing to its demographics.” He suggested companies to train their employees in Japanese.
Mr. Bollu said HYSEA was collaborating with Software Development Parks of India to establish a centre of excellence (CoE) on computer vision and artificial intelligence. This CoE, he said, would enable innovation in artificial reality and virtual reality. It would also deal with video analytics, among others. The idea, he said, was to shift the centre of gravity from Bengaluru to Hyderabad.
