Monday, September 8, 2003		Guest Speak

Past tense, future speculative
Ajay Kumar Sharma

THE Indian IT industry is undoubtedly a jewel in India’s crown. The Indian software and services industry has continued to buck the global recessionary trends in 2002-03 and emerge as the country’s leading revenue generator and employment creator over the past 12 months. In fact, as statistics indicate, despite operating in an overall compressed market that was characterised by a significant reduction in IT expenditure, the Indian IT sector achieved a 26 per cent growth rate that made it the fastest growing organised business sector in India.

The potential of this industry segment and its ability to impact the social fabric of the country cannot be underestimated. The Indian software exports market is expected to reach $ 28-30 billion by 2008 and this sector is expected to employ 1.1 million persons by 2008, says Nasscom. It is this pool of software professionals that are leading India’s charge into the 21st century and helping transform India’s image from being a land of snake-charmers to that of an IT-savvy nation.

India’s main competitive advantage in the software and services industry is its large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking knowledge workers. As we go forward, it will be imperative that the state and central governments as well as the private sector initiate immediate steps to protect and enhance this national resource and thereby sustain India’s competitive advantage

Educational institutions and polytechnics, as well as the IITs are the principal sources of ‘Knowledge professionals’ and its known the world over that the alumnus of these T-Schools are growing into business leaders across the USA, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. Annually, 1,67,000 engineering students pass out from these engineering institutes. While this entire talent pool and almost 1.5 million graduates are available for the software and services industry in India, some gaps remain which need to be filled by the private training institutes. The need of the hour is for both these sectors to come together and strengthen the IT education system, so as to ensure that we are able to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of quality IT professionals.

If we were to look back and analyse the growth of the private training sector in India, it becomes apparent that the growth of this sector has been closely intertwined with the growth of our IT industry. As the IT industry grew in the early nineties, there was a lot of interest among students to pursue a career in information technology. This was the period when large IT training and education organisations were instituted and started offering long-duration career-oriented courses that became popular with undergraduates. Such was the aspiration to become an IT professional that students pursued these IT courses in tandem with their regular graduate degrees as they believed that this dual certification would give them a better chance of securing employment in the IT sector.

Impact

The slowdown in the IT sector, as would be expected, has been tough on the IT training institutes that have proliferated across the country. With the glamour and employment opportunities offered by the sector receding, there has also been a sharp reduction in the number of students registering for IT training programs. Confused by the doom and gloom stories appearing in the press and the spate of layoff announcements made by companies, students have adopted a wait-and-watch policy, delaying their decision of taking up IT courses while evaluating the long-term prospects of the industry.

As a result of this business correction, the IT industry has witnessed a shake out with many mom-and-pop training institutes shutting shops and renegading on their promise to deliver IT training. Many of the other more established IT training companies have had to redesign their business models and consolidate their operations to be more in sync with business realties and the quality standards adopted by the training sector in western countries.

Future

There have been several early indications that point to the fact that there is going to be an increase in IT spending and that there is going to be an uptake in IT recruitment. Both these trends will go a long way in rejuvenating the IT training industry as:

a) They will help restore confidence in the viability of IT as a career opportunity and

b) The current emphasis on enhancing employee productivity is expected to give a spurt

‘IT re-skilling’ as companies endeavor to extract the most of their IT investments.

As the IT training sector settles down to make the most of the opportunities presented to it in the current business environment, it is imperative that we learn our lessons from the past and adopt a more long term and strategic approach going forward.