The Supply Chain for the Future

So this year's Top 20 exercise is a toast to growth, again. For both

exports and the India market.

But there's another side. Take the exports area that's two-thirds of

India's $28.5 bn IT industry (2004-05: Dataquest). This largely services

industry is headcount-driven. It's linear. If you want a billion dollars, you

divide that by, say, Rs 18 lakh to count the heads you need.

The supply side says: that won't work forever. The industry wants to get to

$50 bn in services exports by 2008. That's 1.2 mn qualified people. Nasscom

projects annual supply at 180K.

But we haven't counted the domestic market. Even at a modest 30% share of

the industry, it will be $20 bn; and though half will be hardware, we need the

heads to sell, deploy, maintain and use it. And domestic services will be most

of the other half. Lower rupee billings make that a half million people! But if

everyone goes off into services exports-where will they come from?

So, go non-linear. How? Forays into high-value areas, from design services to

consulting, have so far been too small to make a dent.

All this was much debated at Nasscom's July HR Summit in Chennai. The

debate was pepped up by the "suppliers": academia, with its strong

views. For instance: what's industry doing to develop future talent? It comes

in on 'day one' to pick up top talent, or, perhaps, a company sponsors five

students, to absorb them two years later...

"What more can we do?" Maybe, identify areas needed to scale up in

value tomorrow-and support and guide education into that direction. Such as

skills and domains for higher-value services. Companies do work with colleges-but

for on their own HR/market/ecosystem development. That's okay, but it

basically adds to today's numbers on the linear scale. We need future

tech/domain/skill training, and influence on the curricula (and support so that

the best people don't run away from teaching). Software veteran FC Kohli took

up the cause of chip design, because the number of graduates in that area was

tiny, impeding growth. There are too few such examples. Nasscom also suggests

software courses in arts curricula. Such efforts can help introduce expand and

develop the "supply chain" for five years later.

When our channel publications conduct forums for resellers moving to

services, the discussion again veers to HR. Where do I get qualified people? How

on earth do I retain them, especially after spending on their training? How do I

retrain my senior people? How about myself?

After G, there's H. HR, the last frontier for Growth. And not just for

services exports. Vendors, SIs, dealers, and users will struggle with workforce

issues. And this demands industry collaboration today-for the future.

Prasanto K Roy