India may be facing a major battle for digital talent right now, but the good news is that the country is well placed in terms of demand for tech talent compared to major economies like the US, UK and China with the smallest supply gap, industry body Nasscom said .
“India’s tech talent demand gap is the lowest at 21.1% compared to other major economies,” said Sangeeta Gupta, senior VP and chief strategy officer, Nasscom. “The growing graduate pool coupled with a maturing talent ecosystem is helping the country’s digital talent pool grow, despite brain drain for the right talent.”
Talent remains a key asset for Indian IT. In FY22, the country’s tech industry employed more than 5.1 million people, of whom about 1.6 million were digitally skilled, she said.
“India has emerged as an unparalleled human capital destination and is the ‘digital talent nation’ for the world, with Indian IT as the flag bearer,” added Ms. Gupta.
To sustain this growth trend, the tech industry is pursuing in-house reskilling programs and collaborations with EdTech companies to upskill their workforce and develop the future workforce in digital skills.
“Our digital tech talent is growing 5x faster than core IT talent. In particular, the supply of digital talent for key digital skills such as cloud computing, AI, big data analytics and IoT has grown at a CAGR of over 20% over the past five years,” noted Ms. Gupta.
For India to maintain its leadership position in the digital age, it must not only address strategies aimed at nurturing domestic talent, but also work to attract the best global talent to fuel the next decade of growth and innovation, she said.
“We need to amplify our talent strategies to build digital skills in smaller cities, get more women to join the workforce with hybrid work norms, redesign professional education from ITIs and polytechnics, incentivize qualifications, and innovate learning modules through government certifications to explore,” Ms Gupta remarked.
