IT industry to grow by $20 bn, hire 2.75 lakh: NASSCOM

Hyderabad, Dec 3: The National Association for Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) on Thursday said the industry will hire 2.75 lakh while the revenues will grow by $20 billion during the current financial year.

The apex body of IT industry has thus revised the earlier hiring projection of 2.30 lakh.

NASSCOM chairman BVR Mohan Reddy attributed the earlier projection to the slow down in hiring by the companies.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of launch of Centre for Healthcare Entrepreneurship by Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad, he said that the industry is projected to add $20 billion over last year's $148 billion. The growth in revenues will thus be higher compared to $16 billion during 2014-15.

"The growth will be by 12 to 13 per cent. We are confident about that, depending on where the dollar and rupee would go," he added.

Reddy said the growth will be mainly due to adoption of 'disruptive' technologies in terms of automation and knowledge-based workforce coming into the sector. Stating that the days of very large projects are over, he said the coming days will witness more smaller projects.

He projected solid and positive outlook for the year. However, disturbances in some of the regions may have some impact in the long-run.

On the problems faced by the IT sector in in Chennai due to heavy rains, he said NASSCOM was in touch with its members.

He noted that large companies had taken precautions well ahead of the rains, by moving critical functions and some physical assets out of Chennai, adding many firms lost two days due to the unprecedented situation.

IANS