Earlier I had written about the BPS industry being at a sweet spot. However the bitter truth is that we are staring at big numbers when it comes to employability too. A survey by Aspiring Minds (www.aspiringminds.in) in 2013 reports that about 47% of graduates are not employable in any area primarily due to poor cognitive as well as English language skills. Computer knowledge and application is another weakness. Only about 21.37% of the graduates are employable in the ITeS sector and mostly for non functional roles.
If India has to maintain its competitive advantage in the ITeS sector (today it is talent availability more in terms of numbers) then quality and consistency are key in the future. With forecast 2020 revenues in the region of 50 Billion USD my estimate works to about 1.9 million direct employment in this sector by 2020. Around that time we can compute that the ITeS industry alone would need about 100,000 to 150,000 graduates per year. This is based on the trend where we grew from < 1 Billion USD in 2001 to about 16.8 Billion USD over next ten years.
Each year Indian universities and colleges graduate about 5 Million every year from over 30,000 colleges and of this over 85% are non-engineering graduates. If you look at the demographics as per the Aspiringminds report female to male ratio is about 100 to 109 for general degree programs versus 100 to 196 for engineering degree programs.
Reasons for lower employability is that today's curriculum is not job oriented and from our experience in working with colleges and universities the curriculum lags by anything between 1 to 10 years from what industry demands across various skill areas in ITeS.
While the ITeS sector caters to several global clients the challenge is that today organizations don't have the luxury of training (unlike previous decades of 60's to 80's) hires for extended periods of time. Today's customers need a quick turn around in taking over their business processes and running them real time. So it is not about one organization in India losing business to another rather it is about other countries vying for the same business. We have a threat from Latin America, Eastern Europe as well as Asian Countries like Philippines.
Unless something drastic is done on the employability front it would be futile for India's competitive edge in the coming decade. Solution required cannot be only in hands of the education sector. Lot of investment has happened in education but it is only a collaborative effort with industry working closely with academia that can bring about this change in focus.
More on how and what can be done in a later post
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BPS Industry in India: In a Sweet Spot
Reasons for lower employability is that today's curriculum is not job oriented and from our experience in working with colleges and universities the curriculum lags by anything between 1 to 10 years from what industry demands across various skill areas in ITeS.
While the ITeS sector caters to several global clients the challenge is that today organizations don't have the luxury of training (unlike previous decades of 60's to 80's) hires for extended periods of time. Today's customers need a quick turn around in taking over their business processes and running them real time. So it is not about one organization in India losing business to another rather it is about other countries vying for the same business. We have a threat from Latin America, Eastern Europe as well as Asian Countries like Philippines.
Unless something drastic is done on the employability front it would be futile for India's competitive edge in the coming decade. Solution required cannot be only in hands of the education sector. Lot of investment has happened in education but it is only a collaborative effort with industry working closely with academia that can bring about this change in focus.
More on how and what can be done in a later post
You may also like to browse
BPS Industry in India: In a Sweet Spot
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