DIFFERENT SHADES OF IT

The IT/ ITES-BPO sector throws up immense opportunities for those who want to make a career in this field. To explore more about the industry, Education Times spoke to the NASSCOM president, Kiran Karnik about the emerging areas in IT/ITES-BPO sector. Nasscom is the apex industry association of software and service companies in India.

Emerging Areas In The ITES-BPO Industry

The latest in the industry is outsourcing of human resource(HR) business process. The HR component is identified as one of the key challenges of the ITES-BPO industry and we are trying to address short-term challenges such as attrition as well as longterm challenges such as ensuring availability of a skilled talent pool.

Growth Areas In IT/ITES/BPO

Various new opportunities are coming up in the ITES-BPO sector. Equity analysis, which deals with high-end technical support and providing knowledge services to enterprises is one such emerging area. But to enter the high-end ITES-BPO sector, you need to be above average and should have an edge over others in terms of your skills.


On the whole, your qualifications become more complete when you combine your domain skills where you can be an MBA, a fashion designer, architect, engineer and the like - with your IT skills. The usage of IT increases your work efficiency.


Well, talking solely about hot skill segments in pure IT, I think that the requirement is substantially in the core IT areas like software programming.


At the moment, the area that is picking up in IT is banking and financial services. Now, we are seeing a revival in telecom services as well.

NASSCOM's Educational Initiatives

Apparently, the industry is doing well. So with regard to the future growth prospects, we are concerned about the shortage of skilled manpower. The number of graduates is satisfactory, but in terms of quality and skill-sets that are required for this industry, we might witness a possible shortage in a few years from now.


We want to make sure that the numbers are large enough and the quality and content are such that students are able to find good employment opportunities. We have started interacting with the heads of the Indian education system. We are first trying to work with the industry to know about the skill-sets they need and then see how these integrate with the curriculum of colleges, universities and other various IT-training institutions.


The first phase of our talks with the industry is on, but the second stage where we will work with the university system is in the pipeline. In fact, we have already made some preliminary contacts with the universities.


The UGC is in regular touch with us. The UGC has come up with the idea of starting a short-term certificate course in IT/ITES, such as a certificate in customer relationship management, accent neutralisation, accounting transaction or something which can enable one to get a job in the industry.


These courses will just add one more class to students daily college lives. As the UGC appears to be very positive in its approach, we definitely will start something from this academic year itself. In Kerala, the ITES courses are already on, in various training institutes.

Future Plans

We are looking at long-term activities with schools and our focus will be English language. The English-language training in India, especially in schools should focus more on ‘communication’ rather than on just literary knowledge.


We are trying to promote the rewards, of learning a foreign language as well like French, Spanish, German and Japanese, as we deal a lot in these languages in our IT/ITES work area. This area presents immense opportunities for anyone who attains expertise in any of these foreign languages.

Advice To The Youth

Take up an area in which you have an interest and excel in it. Today, opportunities galore for youth in different areas. So grab the opportunity and be a master in your area of excellence.

Education Times

I find that the supplement is evolving; it’s content is topical. Unquestionably, it’s very useful for young people. The supplement provides information on different careers as well as alternative careers.

Sources : Times of India