'IT industry faces shortage of skilled manpower'

New Delhi, Aug 21: Despite being a global software services hub, India is facing a big challenge in hiring skilled manpower in IT industry, though the sector is expected to generate over two million jobs by 2014, experts from the industry said here today.

Participating in a seminar on 'Aiming Global Business: IT-ITeS Industry's New Priorities, New Realities', at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), the experts pointed out that there is a need to invest in training people to meet the HR requirments with the changing global business senario.

In his keynote address, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) President Kiran Karnik said, ''The IT industry is facing big HR challenge as it is not getting people with right skills.'' Asserting that engineering services have huge potential, he suggested synergising it with the IT.

The Nasscom President further stressed on encouraging innovative ideas and creativity, saying the IT sector will grow with doing things differently.

IT Secretary Jainder Singh said, ''Keeping in view the large demand for the manpower in the key verticals, like insurance, banking, financial analysis etc, courses aiming at generation of manpower for ITeS/BPO sectors, have been started.'' To stay in the lead and continue to increase India's share in the global market, Mr Singh said ''Government and IT/BPO need to work in conjugation to move up in value chain cultivating deep and enduring innovation across three dimensions, that is in business model, knowledge and eco-system, and also to expand into other countries than the US for tapping the new centres of emerging requirement, as well as stimulating domestic IT demand.''

India can deliver high quality end-to-end services and this an opportunity that India by developing its potentials in KPOs (Knowledge Process Outsoursing) can enable companies to maximise their savings through off-shore operations, he said.

India is aiming at capturing 15 per cent share of world market by 2010, which was 54 billion dollar in 2005, he added. Existing market share of India is 5 per cent.

Bioinformatics, he said, has emerged as one of the most dynamic field in current biological research and the biotech business in the country has the potential to generate annual revenues of 5 billion dollar and a million skilled jobs by 2020.

''DIT has proposed to establish a centre of excellence for carrying out research and generation of high-end manpower in bioinformatics,'' he said.

The total number of IT and ITeS-BPO professionals employed in India is estimated to have grown from 2,84,000 in 1999-2000 to 1,287,000 in 2005-2006 and is likely to cross 2 million mark by 2014. In addition, Indian IT-ITeS is estimated to have helped create 3 million jobs via indirect employment. Considering the role of IT industry in job creation and GDP growth of the country, IIFT Director Prabir Sengupta said the software and IT services growth is projected to reach a figure of 60 billion dollar in 2009-10.

''Similarly, the contribution of IT companies to the GDP is expected to increase from the current level of 4.5 per cent to 8-10 per cent by 2008'' he said.

Commenting on the future of the industry, he said it lies in industry's ability to successfully transit from being a outsourcing hub for software services, ITeS, BPO, KPO to global sourcing of product development. Much greater emphasis on R and D services is need of the hour, he added.

Other speakers, including CEOs, COOs and MDs of various leading companies, also pointed out Human Resource challenge in IT industry and laid emphasis on investing in training manpower, including fascilitating in-campus training sessions.

UNI