'Keep costs variable'

Kapil Dev Singh, country manager at IDC India says IT services vendors need to keep costs "variable" for some time to come.

Though services are driving growth of the Indian IT industry, committing to a specific line of service, by hiring permanent staff, may be a bad idea, Singh said.

"We are now close to the peak growth rate" and IDC expects the IT industry's growth rate to peak this year, he said. This called for a "variable-isation" of costs, and one way of doing this was to hire more "temp staff".

As a result, the business of providing temporary staff to the large IT firms itself will see a surge, he said.