BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 19. Experts say that 30-40 percent of the more than 300,000 technology jobs lost to layoffs globally could move to outsourcing hubs like India in the coming months.
A lot of these jobs are likely to be redistributed across the existing workforce of large tech companies in India, they said.
Sanjay Shetty, director-professional search and selection, Randstad India, expects 30-40 percent of tech jobs that were cut globally to move to India by 2024-2025.
“India is going to be the biggest gainer in the medium to long term, as almost every company that we speak to is looking at expanding its India base,” Shetty told.
Over the last year, global technology companies and technology service arms of multinationals such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Salesforce have announced multiple rounds of layoffs. So have large banking and telecom majors.
Data from staffing firm Xpheno shows that while the India workforce of big tech companies accounts for about 17 percent of their global staff strength, it has grown by 35 percent in the last 12 months compared with 12 percent headcount addition in the rest of the world.
The banking, financial services and insurance sector saw the next highest growth in headcount at 21 percent.
According to data from tech industry body Nasscom, India has more than 2,700 global capability centre (GCC) units, of which more than 65 percent are of US-headquartered companies. The Indian GCCs cohort added a little over 150,000 employees to grow from 1.45 million in fiscal 2022 to 1.6 million by end fiscal 2023, said Kamal Karanth, cofounder, Xpheno.
“While companies are facing a slowdown in North America and the Europe-UK markets, they are keen on improving their profitability through more work addressed out of India centres,” Shetty said.
He added that since several multinationals have a large number of in-house delivery and capability centres based out of India, there is a higher level of work moving to the country. This is despite labour arbitrage between India and other countries reducing over the years.
“A dipstick of 25 Indian bellwether GCCs and their affiliates across banking, big tech, Big Four consultancies and pharmaceuticals sector shows a significant concentration of hiring action in India versus their rest of world locations,” said Karanth. “The list also includes big tech players who have announced waves of layoffs globally and some in India as well.”
Neeti Sharma, president and cofounder of Teamlease Edtech, said many companies have started upskilling and reskilling their employees to take over roles--in part or entirely--for the jobs rationalised elsewhere.
She said companies are looking at adding freshers and lateral hires. “It is not feasible to shift every role. But we see demand for entry level roles which require up to three months of skilling. In addition, existing employees are also being upskilled to deliver part of the roles that can be delivered remotely,” Sharma said.