India’s tech industry is set to have a revenue growth rate of 15.5% in FY2022 and it added nearly 4.5 lakh people to its employee base, a new NASSCOM report revealed on Tuesday, February 15. The growth rate is the fastest in a decade, and NASSCOM’s Strategic Review attributed it to increased global spending as the pandemic triggered digital transformation.
“The Indian technology industry crossed the $200 bn revenue mark, reaching $227 bn revenue in FY 2022, witnessing a $30 bn incremental revenue in the year with an overall growth rate of 15.5%,” NASSCOM said. NASSCOM’s president Debjani Ghosh told reporters that in FY21, the revenue growth stood at 2.3%, and is double that of what it was in FY20 ending March 31, 2020.
“This has been a watershed year for the technology industry thanks to the persistent focus on customer centricity… The industry has added $100 billion in the last 10 years; the first $100 billion took 30 years,” said Debjani Ghosh.
“The current demand trends on technology spending and economic growth point to a positive outlook on technology spending and hiring. The industry has also set itself an ambitious target of $350 bn by FY2026 growing at a rate of 11-14%,” a statement by NASSCOM said.
NASSCOM said that India is now a global hub for digital talent with a fifty lakh-strong tech workforce, and it added that the industry added 4.5 lakh people to its employee base in FY2022, a nearly 10% estimated growth in direct employee pool in FY22. Of this, over 20 lakh were reportedly added in the last decade
With one out of three employees already digitally skilled, the digital tech talent pool stood at 16 lakh, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25%, according to the report released by Indian IT industry's apex body. "We remain committed to catalysing the trillion-dollar digital economy with our focus on talent, technology, collaboration, and innovation," said NASSCOM Chairperson Rekha M Menon.
With over 36% women employees, the tech industry is one of the largest private sector women employers in India with over 18 lakh women in the workforce, the findings showed. It said that of the new jobs, 44% — roughly 2 lakh jobs — were for women.
Debjani Ghosh also spoke about concentration of economic activity, stating that it is a challenge and that the industry has created micro IT hubs in tier-2 and tier-3 locations away from just cities such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Attrition, the big problem that the Indian IT sector is facing, may have hit its peak, according to vice-chairman Krishnan Ramanujam. In line with what companies said during their earnings press conferences, Ramanujam said that attrition levels were either beginning to plateau, or in some cases, have begun trending down. Similarly, Debjani Ghosh said that talent retention is a key imperative for the industry. Debjani Ghosh had cited a survey of over 100 tech company CEO’s, who had flagged attrition as one of the key challenges.
Rekha Menon called 2022 a breakthrough year for the Indian tech industry, and said they are excited about opportunities as “we enter an era of exponential transformation and technology becomes indispensable to progress.”