There may be some silver lining in all the global economic gloom for techies in India. According to a report in Economic Times, quoting sources, some 30-40% of the more than 300,000 technology jobs lost to layoffs globally could move to outsourcing hubs like India in the coming months. The report added that a lot of these jobs are likely to be redistributed across the existing workforce of large tech companies in India.
India may be the “biggest gainer”
“India is going to be the biggest gainer in the medium to long term, as almost every company that we speak to is looking at expanding its India base,” Sanjay Shetty, director-professional search and selection, Randstad India, told the publication.He expects some part of the tech jobs that were cut globally to move to India by 2024-25.
In the last six months, global technology companies and technology service arms of multinationals such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Salesforce have announced multiple rounds of layoffs. So have large banking and telecom majors.
Hiring grew fastest in India
Data from staffing firm Xpheno shows that while the India workforce of big tech companies accounts for about 17% of their global staff strength, it has grown by 35% in the last 12 months compared with 12% headcount addition in the rest of the world. The sector that saw the second-highest growth is banking, financial services and insurance sector — logging in the headcount growth of 21%. The Indian GCCs cohort added a little over 150,000 employees to grow from 1.45 million in fiscal 2022 to 1.6 million by end fiscal 2023, said Kamal Karanth, cofounder, Xpheno.

What may bring jobs to India
According to Randstad India’s Shetty, while companies are facing a slowdown in North America and the Europe-UK markets, they are keen on improving their profitability through more work addressed out of India centres. He further added that since several multinationals have a large number of in-house delivery and capability centres based out of India, there is a higher level of work moving to the country.
Neeti Sharma, president and cofounder of Teamlease Edtech, said that many companies have started upskilling and reskilling their employees to take over roles–in part or entirely–for the jobs rationalised elsewhere. She added that companies are looking at adding freshers and lateral hires.
According to data from tech industry body Nasscom, India has more than 2,700 global capability centre (GCC) units, of which more than 65% are of US-headquartered companies.