India’s IT industry laid off over 56,000 employees in 2017

India has been progressing with a firm footing in the digital ecosystem of the world, with its $160 billion IT industry. The IT industry of India has also been one of the top employment generators a few years back. However, the year 2017 has been the worst nightmare for Indian techies. More than 56,000 Indian techies of Indian IT industry have been laid off in 2017.

Analysts reveal that India tech industry is facing major collapse as the percentage of hiring tech internee has also reduced by 50%. The people with entry-level IT skills have no place in big firms and those who are highly professional accommodate themselves for lesser wages.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, which are also considered as India’s biggest IT firms and leaders in job creation, have also been affected by this collapse. Both the companies have laid off a number of employees in a current year. Even the mid-size market holders like Tech Mahindra retrenched numerous employees from the company.

The forced attrition (asking non-performers to leave) in India’s tech industry which was recorded at 1% in earlier years, has now reached to 2-6% in 2017. An executive of TeamLease Services, Alka Dhingra indicates that this proportion of retrenching has drastically increased this year.

Infosys has earlier laid off 9,000 employees back in January. IT companies in India are adopting a very strange policy of replacing humans with a software to work on a specific project. According to Vishal Sikka, the CEO of Bengaluru based company,

“Instead of 10 people, what if we have three people to work on (a project). If we don’t have the software, then some others will take the advantage (away from us).”

Meanwhile, around 6,000 Indian employees of Cognizant hits the surface where employees lost their jobs due to the growing interest of companies in automation. Whereas the tech giants like Google are investing to train people for high-tech jobs and automated environment.