While addressing the media on key achievements and new initiatives of the ministry of Information & Information Technology in last three years, Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister for Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice said that the Indian technology startup sector will offer strong and growing employment prospects for Indian IT professionals.
Commenting on the recent layoffs by the major IT companies in India, he explained that the Indian IT sector employment prospects, both in the near and long-term is expected to be broadly positive and encouraging for the future. India IT companies currently serve two thirds of the fortune 500 companies and have created 40 lakhs direct jobs in India.
NASSCOM has already publicly contradicted reports of large scale layoff and have projected that the IT industry will continue to be a net hiring source as 2.5 to 3 million new jobs will be created by 2025. In FY 2017, the industry has added 1,70,000 new jobs. IT industry added 600,000 in last three years and today, boasts of a total employee base of 3.9 million.
Even TeamLease analysis for 2017-18 reported that IT sector hiring sentiments is positive and is up by four percent in October 2016 to March 2017, compared to the previous six-month period. The TeamLease analyses also indicated that e-commerce and technology startup sector hiring sentiments has increased by two percent, with projected 14.94 percent job growth.
Also recruitment and staffing firm Randstad projects (in December 2016), a cumulative growth rate of nine percent in the IT / ITeS job market.
The minister said that India’s domestic IT market offers strong prospects for industry growth, even if global markets were to face challenges. “India’s total software product market grew at 9.5 percent in FY2017 to reach USD seven billion. (Exports grew 7.8% to reach USD 2.3 billion.) In comparison, the domestic market grew much faster, at 10.4%, reaching USD 4.8 billion.”
India’s overall domestic IT/BPM sector is expected to grow at 8.5% from USD 35 billion in 2016 to an anticipated USD 37 billion in 2017, he added.