Does any one know how many techies we produce each year in Nepal? I see some hope here! India to face shortage of IT workers HT Correspondent New Delhi, December 13, 2005 India contributes 28 per cent to the total talent pool of knowledge workers in the world. This has helped it corner 65 per cent of the information technology business and 46 per cent of the ITES market. But the greatest challenge staring the software services exports in the face is skill shortage. The country will face a shortage of 500,000 knowledge workers by 2010. The IT services sector will need 150,000 employees while the BPO sector will need 350,000 trained personnel. According to Nasscom-McKinsey Report 2005, the problem is more of suitability than of availability of labour since India is at the right side of demographic divide. According to the report 2005, “The country will need 2.3 million professionals to meet the $60 billion export revenue target by then. But the present education system will be able to churn out only 7,00,000. “The country needs to do with higher education what it did with telecom. Deregulate the sector so that some universities are given a deemed university status, allow flexibility in curriculum, funding, and teachers salaries,” says McKinsey & Co partner Noshir Kaka. The 2005 report, which is third in the series after the ones released in 1999 and 2002, does not include the domestic market and product development data. Focussed solely on services exports, the report expects the software services and ITES revenues to touch $50 billion by 2008. Another $15 billion to $20 billion could be contributed by innovation services (read R&D) by 2010. Says Nasscom chairman and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO S. Ramadorai, “We have only captured 10 per cent of the addressable global market of $300 billion. There is an opportunity of $150-180 billion in the IT services space and $120-150 billion in the BPO space that India can play in.” The report points out that presently Indian companies have tapped only one-ninth of the potential in IT services and one-twelfth of the potential in BPO. McKinsey & Co partner Jayant Sinha says, “The problem of skill set shortage can be combated by creating certain focussed knowledge zones, as it is more a problem of quality and not of numbers. But India will need 10-12 integrated knowledge cities in the next five years to tackle problems of infrastructure in order to match targets.” The report envisages that the sector will create 1.6 million knowledge professionals and give indirect employment to another 6.5 million people by 2010