‘Need for 2.7mn digitally skilled people by 2023’

Chennai: India will need around four times its existing digital tech professionals over the next four years to feed the burgeonining demand created by IT industry.
The country has around 6.8 lakh digital professionals and the requirements are 2.7 million by 2023, Nasscom officials said.
The IT industry employs nearly 4 million professionals today. This demand will need to be met from both fresh talent from educational institutions and by upskilling the current information technology (IT) talent base, Nasscom representatives added, on the sidelines of the annual HR Summit in Chennai.
“When we talk to the industry today, finding the right talent and developing them emerges as the biggest issue for most companies.If we don't fix our talent issues, our IT companies are just going to be hiring from one another, which is not a good situation to be in,” Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh said.
Nasscom said that almost 60%-65% of the current IT jobs are likely to undergo huge changes over the next five years, making re-skilling and upskilling significant for the industry. To counter this, Nasscom, through its FutureSkills initiative, has set itself a target to upskill four million people by 2025, and transform over 100 universities to help them create digital talent. SRM University in Chennai is the first university partner to help build the engagement model with educational institutions to improve the overall readiness of graduating students.
Last year was a positive one for the industry in terms of jobs, and though Nasscom has done away with offering guidance, Nasscom’s CEO survey envisages a positive mood for Indian IT this year, Ghosh added.
The FutureSkills platform has identified 10 professional skills as key for the industry’s future including problem solving, design thinking, continuous learning, communication & story-telling, negotiating & influencing, collaboration, project management, product management, program management and digitalisation.
Within its digital talent base, India has around 2,60,000 people in cloud computing, 1.85,000 in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data analytics, 1,85,000 in social media and mobile platforms and almost 1,70,000 in Internet of Things (IoT), the industry body said. Nasscom also aims to move from a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) approach to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) as liberal arts emerge an integral part of understanding emerging tech.