Pune: Automation and digital-led services are the two major challenges faced by the Indian Information Technology (IT) sector. Arun Rajamani, Country General Manager of Pluralsight India, believes that 60 to 70 per cent of the Indian IT workforce will go through some form of re-skilling in the near future to tackle these challenges.
According to Rajamani, “Indian IT sector should look at automation not as a threat, but an opportunity. In their report on the future of jobs for the 4th industrial revolution, the World Economic Forum said that during previous industrial revolutions it took decades to build training systems and labour market institutions. That is simply not an option now and there is a need for rethinking educational systems and encouraging life long learning to cope with technology disruptions. Automation has thrown the spotlight on the need for Indian technology professionals and students to constantly invest in re-skilling themselves.”
Rajamani believes that online learning is the best way to learn in today’s environment. “Whether you are looking for a job or are presently working, online, learning provides the best way to learn quickly, on-the-go, allowing for personalisation of learning, online assessments and tailoring of learning paths to align with your career path,” he said.
As the digital economy takes over, he believes that digital experience-related skills and digital infrastructure-related skills have become necessary for IT professionals to keep their jobs. “Digital experience-related skills revolve around designing and implementing digital customer experiences for clients. It could be skills such as design thinking, integrated customer experience management, multi-channel customer experience (web+mobile) and others. While digital infrastructure-related skills can be bucketed into five categories linked to modernising legacy IT infrastructure and IT processes automation, cloud, devops, cyber security and data analytics,” he said.
Elaborating further on the issue, Rajamani explained that earlier one would have thought that IT industry is the only option for a tech professional.
“However, this is no longer the case. Today, creative technology is fast emerging as a viable alternative to the heavily staffed Information Technology sector in the country. NASSCOM, India has over 200 game development studios that are employing thousands of game developers, who in turn are combining their programming skills with their creative skills.
“India also has over 300 animation studios, 40 visual effect studios, innumerable creative and digital marketing agencies and thousands of graphic designers working for companies or independently. This represents a significant opportunity for tech professionals to pursue,” he said.
Speaking about disruption caused by digital marketing, he said more than disruption, digital marketing will enable the adoption and usage of digital services in our day to day life from shopping, payments, collaboration and a variety of other areas.
“Digital marketing will provide stimulus on digital media and devices to strengthen initiatives like Digital India. With a lower cost per impression and conversion as compared to print, digital will be the vehicle that companies and government will use to drive messages at scale across the length and breadth of India,” he said.
Adding on how Pluralsight is enabling the re-skilling process, Rajamani said, “Today, with online learning, IT companies can transform workforces at scale. Pluralsight partners with hundreds of tech companies in India with our enterprise technology learning platform and are reinventing themselves in the digital era and are offering digital-led services and building digital infrastructure platforms for the customers,” he said.
