There is a talent shortage looming in India's tech services industry.
With technology shifts, where automation and artificial intelligence takes over routine jobs such as testing and bug fixing, and cloud and digital implementation, Indian firms are struggling to scale resources for the new challenge. The biggest concern has been the lack of skills to think, engage and deliver to customers in a scenario where they are also novices, unlike traditional services where clients describe the work they want from their vendors.
Infosys chief executive officer Vishal Sikka has pointed that the lack of value creation has been the biggest challenge in the shifts that the industry is undergoing.
"Often teams deliver only what is told without going beyond the given scope and with a lackadaisical attitude towards greater value creation. This can no longer be the case," Sikka wrote in his new year letter to employees.
A study by Singapore-based Emeritus Institute of Management (EIM), in November, conducted among the 350 c-suite level executives of IT/ITeS, manufacturing and BFSI sector, in India, states that nearly 85% of the IT services firms consider “mismatch between skills required and the skills that are available in the market” is the second most critical problem.
EMI chalked out active measures that need to be taken to address the talent shortage in digital technology. These should include reviewing the curriculum at all levels of education to ensure digital technologies are presented, improving access to higher education and training, and encouraging public-private partnerships in higher education.
“The demand for emerging technology services is changing faster than more engineers or managers are created for its delivery,” said Ashwin Damera, executive director, Emeritus Institute of Management (EIM), adding that “it is no longer sufficient to know how to write C++”.
More than half of the IT services firms reached out to through the survey said that innovation and critical thinking are the key shortcomings both among fresh engineers and existing workforce, as they look at digital transformation. The survey, India Inc’s Middle Order Crisis, has found out that execution skills and business acumen are not as big problems as innovation.
But analysts say that Indian firms have traditionally adapted to technology and business shifts and have re-trained their engineers to work on newer technologies to deliver value to their customers.
“We don’t see a bigger problem yet. The number of senior-level people required to make decisions in digital technology are less and we have it,” says Kris Lakshmikanth, chairman & managing director of The Head Hunters India, a specialised recruiting agency for IT sector. “IIT’s do teach machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, even though the courses may not suffice the industry requirement.”
Since Sikka took over at Infosys, he has been pushing to train Infosys employees in design thinking to improve the way they work with clients and projects and sign up with online course company Udacity so that employees get trained and certified for skills in emerging technologies. Rivals Wipro and TCS have also embarked on similar reskilling of resources.
