IT industry creates more jobs than public sector: Murthy

The burgeoning Indian IT industry had over taken the state-run public sector in job creation, Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy said Wednesday.

"The IT industry, especially its software sector, has over taken public sector undertakings (PSUs) as the biggest job creator in the country, with 3.2 million employees and adding 200,000 new jobs every year," Murthy said at a special session of the Commonwealth Science Conference here.

Noting IT bellwethers such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro provided not only high quality jobs, but also higher disposable incomes than other companies in the country, Murthy told about 800 delegates that the Indian IT industry had emerged in the services sector as China had in the manufacturing sector as the factory of the world.

"Huge employment in the software sector has fuelled the economy in many ways, as our techies are able to buy a car, build a home, go shopping in malls or eat in a restaurant and even go on vacation more often," Murthy said while sharing his vision on "Entrepreneurship and Innovation in India" at a special session on the second day of the four-day summit.

Asserting that the IT industry ecosystem created three indirect jobs for every direct job with spin-offs in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy, the former Infosys chairman said the software sector had put India on the global map and boosted its image in the world over.

The industry's representative body Nasscom has projected 14-15 percent growth in IT exports to $99 billion this fiscal (2014-15) from $86 billion last fiscal.

Murthy, however, projected that the Indian software industry would grow 12-14 percent per annum over the next five years.

"The IT industry has brought a new confidence, a new mindset and a new paradigm in Indian business," he noted.