10,000 It Jobs Melt In One Year

The boom has gone bust before you could say hardware. Till recently, infotech companies including software developers and dotcoms provided the much needed succour to the country's unemployed and upwardly mobile alike. Not any longer.

The same companies are now handing out pink slips to their employees. Industry estimates suggest that around 10,000 people in the infotech sector have lost their jobs in the last one year, with the software services sector accounting for 80 per cent of the cuts.

The software sector is feeling the impact of the slowdown in key markets like the US. While many software professionals have been asked to leave, a large number of them have been benched. Though the bigger players in the sector like Tata Consultancy Services have gone to town talking about how they are still adding to their rolls, second and third rung players are either closing shop or laying off people.

Bangalore-based Savantech, a company which was into d-commerce (digital commerce is still waiting to happen), closed down its Indian operations and laid off all its 131 employees in two phases in January 2001 and May 2001. Says a source who was closely involved in the laying off operation,