GICs may hire up to 1.5 lakh people in the next two years

Global in-house centres (GICs), a key segment in the IT-BPM sector, are on a hiring spree. According to Teamlease, these captive units of global IT corporations may hire as many as 1.5 lakh people in the next two years, as companies focus on India to build solutions for a digital landscape. GICs are capability centres focussed on delivering R&D, analytics, automation, IT management and development services to their respective parent enterprises. "GICs have developed as powerful value creators by scaling the footprint of their parent enterprises in India and further driving innovation," Rituparna Chakraborty, cofounder Teamlease, told The Economic Times. According to her, the number of employees is likely to see an "estimated 14% growth", adding that since business growth and employee growth figures are pretty much in the same line, "such an employee growth seems reliable".

In terms of installed GIC talent, the workforce was pegged at about 7.45 lakh in fiscal 2015 and is expected to have approached the 10 lakh-mark in FY19. GICs are also focussing on reskilling and upskilling employees to meet demand for talent in emerging domains such as AI, cloud computing and data science. Earlier this month, another Teamlease report had brought cheer amid the negative sentiment around job losses when it predicted that India will add 11.5 lakh jobs in the first six months of the current fiscal. The study, titled Employment Outlook Report, had further noted that 11 out of 19 sectors surveyed had projected an increase in net employment outlook.

India boasts over 1,200 tech-focused GICs, of which more than a third are pure tech-focused companies that build critical technology for parent entities. This list includes chip makers such as Texas Instruments, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. Industry body Nasscom estimates that India accounts for over 45% of the Global Centers in the world outside of home country. The GIC market size, moreover, is expected to have ballooned nearly 46% from $19.4 billion in 2015 to $28.3 billion in the just-concluded fiscal.

A senior Nasscom executive told the daily that among the centres, "Bengaluru continues to have the largest share of GICs in India with 50% of the total talent base". According to another study by Colliers Research, GIC leasing activity is likely to be in the range of 30-35 million sq ft across the top six cities of Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune over the next three years, Moneycontrol reported. Although Bengaluru is expected to attract the highest proportion of GIC leasing, tech and consumer electronics companies are looking for options in Delhi-NCR for GICs whereas energy and chemical companies are considering Mumbai.

Also read: Niti Aayog pushes for Rs 7,500-crore proposal for AI platform, research institutes

Also read: India to add 11.5 lakh jobs by September 2019, says Teamlease report