Why IoT will be the Biggest Job Creator in the Coming Years The traditional IT services will be replaced by new-age technical talent

India, once known for being the IT outsourcing capital of the world is starting to show signs of slowdown in the sector. Particularly the IT services sector is struggling to create new jobs and cope with new challenges and technologies.

In such times, the existing and upcoming talent pool needs to be redirected to new domains, particularly IoT, Automation, and Big Data oriented training, which will reshape the way industries work in future. The good news is, the IoT space is booming in India with about 65% of Indian startups working on it.

"The government too is looking at ways to lay out regulations for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications as the IT services sector is struggling to create new jobs in the economy, said telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan, at the IoT India Congress 2017.

The Next Wave of Mass Job Creations

Referring to the Indian Silicon Valley's new found dilemma she said , "In Bengaluru and other places, there have been concerns about how Indian IT will cope with new challenges and new technologies. But we believe, or rather it is estimated, that India can have 10-15 million new jobs created in IoT alone," said Sundararajan.

She harped on the fact that most of these will not be created by large companies but by startups as they create need-based solutions in diagnostics, sports wearable, water managements and more such areas which were traditionally problematic, but have become opportunistic now.

"Towards the beginning of next year, we will have a complete set of best practices for IoT," she said. "In addition, the ministries of IT and telecom are working together to bring in robust security protocols for new technologies," she added.

The Shift in Paradigm

In July 2016, research firm HfS predicted that India's IT services industry would lose 6.4 lakh "lowskilled" jobs to automation in the next five years. But despite the overall job losses, Indian firms are expected to benefit from adoption of IoT as they currently have about 40% of the addressed IoT services market, a share that is expected to rise to 44% by 2021.

A recent NASSCOM study, reflected a similar opinion, sating the Indian IoT market is poised to reach $15bn by 2020, accounting for 5% of the global market. The key drivers of this market will be the growing IoT startup companies, government initiatives, growing acceptance of smart applications, and increasing Internet penetration across the country.

Incorporating the Change

Sachin Khurana, Director-People Practices at Happiest Minds Technologies that recently acquired Cupola Technologies, an IoT startup said, "IoT as space is maturing, with huge interest coming from established IT companies, telecom, and startups in building platforms and ecosystems. But, the real game changer is not the size of the IoT team or number of platforms built, but what is the problem that it is solving, its ease of use and cost efficiency."

Talking about how companies need to incorporate this ongoing shift in paradigm, he said, "At Happiest Minds, we have invested in creating focused Centers of Excellence (CoE) for IoT, which has a sharp focus on industrial IoT, smart homes, renewable energy, transportation, and logistics, which is committed to solving real business problems."