Better manpower supply to bring down IT salaries

The Indian IT-ITeS sector, which has seen an upward revision of salaries in the last two-three years, is likely to witness moderation of wages from next year due to a gradual improvement in availability of professionals.

In the last two years, all leading IT and BPO firms saw their wage bill rising by 12-15 per cent. Nasscom, the premier trade body of the Indian IT industry, said its initiatives to improve the supply of human resources were yielding results.

"As talent and workforce development take roots, you will see a moderation in wages. We will see the beginning of this trend next year itself. Overall, the demand-supply gap is more or less balanced," Nasscom Chairman Lakshmi Narayanan said.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Nasscom Quality Summit here on Thursday, Narayanan, who is also the vice-chairman of IT major Cognizant Technologies, pointed out that the supply of human resources has improved on account of the combined initiatives taken by industry, companies and academic institutions.

"For instance, the number of engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu has gone up. Consequently, the intake of students will also increase. This is a good development. Similarly, Nasscom has launched various industry-academia programmes and they are yielding results," he added.

Earlier, addressing the summit, Narayanan stressed the need for improving the quality of services to win customers' confidence. "There is lot more to achieve. The end users in the west are not convinced of the services provided by the Indian IT companies. The industry has to move from quality deliverable to the quality of outcome," he said.

He said the industry has to reorient its mindset. "We have to look at it in an innovative way. Excellence is no longer a goal. It has become a standard today."