India IT skills crisis still looming, warns Nasscom

India could face a severe shortage of highly skilled IT workers by 2010, according to the president of Indian IT trade organisation Nasscom.

Kiran Karnik repeated warnings aired last year that the Indian IT industry could face a shortfall of around half a million workers in four years time, severely limiting growth targets.

Nasscom vice-president Sunil Mehta, told silicon.com what the implications of this would be. "A possible skills shortage will directly impact the business being handled by India, and gradually affect the size and nature of contracts being outsourced to India, and industry revenues," he said.

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Nasscom has been aware of the problem for some time. According to last year's McKinsey report, commissioned by Nasscom, India will need an additional one million people to join the IT and BPO workforce by 2010 (bringing the total workforce to 2.3 million) in order to maintain its current market share.

Mehta said the three ways in which the organisation is trying to combat the problem are: expanding the pipeline of people willing to join the industry; improving the quality of the potential and current workforce; better matching jobs to people so that attrition is reduced.

Mehta added: "We are hopeful that with all this underway, we will be able to solve the potential shortfall for the industry."