Domestic market can make up job losses for overseas biz for IT: ASSOCHAM

India's USD 155 billion IT and Business process management (BPM) industry which is facing heat from the unfolding disruptions in the key markets of the US and Europe and is forced to rationalise its workforce, can create more jobs on net basis if it seriously gets involved in fast expanding domestic market , riding on government's financial inclusion programmes like Jan Dhan Yojana and Aadhar based service delivery models, said ASSOCHAM.

It is time our IT and BPM industry bellwethers looked a bit inward now. It is also time to redraw strategy that gives a good look at the home market, which can more than make up , at least in the short to medium term, for the possible dent on jobs in the disruptive overseas markets, a chamber note said, after an interactive brain -storming .

It was brought out of the interactive consultations that there is no point being reactive to what is happening in the main global consuming centres for the IT and BPM industry, which employs about four million young work force in India in over 16,000 small or big companies.

A close look at the profile of our exports suggest that close to 60 per cent of the exports are accounted for by the banking-finance-insurance . Now , the kind of data base that is being generated by the Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana and its linkages with the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) , can be a delight for different set of analytics , which then can be shaped into products for a whole lot of industries like fast moving consumer goods, automobile, telecom, insurance, agri-inputs and agri products, health and so on, the ASSOCHAM note pointed out.

It said, there was a very strong case for a high level Task Force between the Government and the IT and BPM industry which can put their heads together. It would be a win: win for both. For the government, the Prime Minister's flagship progammes , including Digital India, would get expanded manifold , touching the lives of common citizens , delayering corrupt levels of intermediaries. For the IT industry, here is an opportunity , for converting raw data about new entrants into the financial system into value-added analytics. Further expanding on, industries across different verticals would then reach and penetrate into the untapped pyramids.

Mapping the potential, ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D S Rawat said, if all these steps are taken in a well-coordinated manner, lakhs of new jobs would be created which would far more than make up the possible losses on account of upheavals in the global markets, following emergence of new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning along with the changing political landscape in the US and Europe, by far the largest markets for the Indian IT and BPM industry.

After all, with close to 400 million internet users and India being the largest users of the internet, the market is only going to grow for the digital and financial products. For now, the government would be the biggest user of technology while the domestic industry which has won laurels in the rest of the world should start feeding the Indian market, as if they are dealing with global clients. The short to medium term bright outlook is at home, the paper added.

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