Uncertainty on the visa front is the main challenge for India’s Information Technology sector in 2017-18 but it’s going to be business as usual otherwise, said industry veteran Kris Gopalakrishnan.
“The challenge mainly arises because of uncertainties on the visa front (emanating from US),” the co-founder and former CEO of Infosys told PTI in an interview, discussing prospects of IT industry in the new financial year.
“That’s one challenge I see. I don’t see anything particularly different this year except for the visa issue.
Everything points to a steady growth for the industry,” said the former President of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
“If the global GDP grows around 2-3 per cent, (global) IT investment will grow around 3-5 per cent and Indian IT will grow about 4-5 per cent higher than that. So, it (Indian IT industry) will grow around 9-10 per cent (in 2017-18).”
He said the current fiscal is not going to be the most challenging for the IT industry, noting the financial crisis in 2008 had brought the growth rate to almost zero then.
In the era of digitisation, Indian companies are moving in that space, where new firms are also emerging.
Clients and the industry are increasing investments into some of the new technologies, he said.
Hiring in the IT sector has come down because of slower growth rate, and increasing automation on some types of services such as infrastructure management and testing, he said.
On salaries of entry-level IT engineers not seeing hike in recent years, Gopalakrishnan said it’s a function of supply and demand, and the industry had a large supply and so the salaries are modestly growing.
He said Indian IT engineers also need to move into user industries such as retail manufacturing, healthcare and financial services which require larges-scale IT deployment.
They also need to look at opportunities such as those in product companies and firms providing services on the cloud which require “unique and specialised skills”.
