美国国家公共电台 NPR India's Tech Firms Face Fundamental Shift From IT To More Advanced Tech

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India, the back office for so much information technology, is changing. India's IT talent has maintained computer systems and databases for decades, but new technologies are overtaking the old business model. Here's NPR's Julie McCarthy.

JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE 1: Madeshwaran Subramani is the human face of IT disruption. He recalls being summoned recently to the HR office of his employer at 11 in the morning. By noon, the 29-year-old software engineer was out of a job. He worked for Cognizant Technology, a U.S.-based firm with offices in India.

MADESHWARAN SUBRAMANI: They give only two options.

MCCARTHY: Leave immediately, and take four months' pay. Or stay for two more months, and leave with two months' salary. Subramani, who's got a mortgage and a child, says he was given one hour to choose. He'd been with Cognizant since graduating from college.

SUBRAMANI: Nearly eight year experience associate. Within an hour, everything is over. I chose immediately give ID card to them and came home from office.

MCCARTHY: Employment for IT talent once seemed boundless 2. For 20 years, India's lucrative 3 business model revolved 4 around the idea that you can move work to low-cost locations such as India. But cheap, outsourced labor 5 that performs routine tasks is being eclipsed, says Peter Bendor-Samuel. The CEO of the Dallas-based research consulting firm Everest says demand now is for disruptive technologies.

PETER BENDOR-SAMUEL: Things like artificial intelligence, cloud, big data analytics, RPA - robotic process automation.

MCCARTHY: Technologies that require highly advanced skills. And to be competitive, India's IT firms will have to either replace or reskill their workers.

BENDOR-SAMUEL: But I think a significant proportion, perhaps as much as half, will struggle with their training.

MCCARTHY: Bendor-Samuel says that 20,000 employees in India's 4-million-strong tech sector 6 already lost their jobs this year and says that will accelerate to hundreds of thousands of layoffs 7 over the next few years.

BENDOR-SAMUEL: And these companies don't only face the issue of retraining people. They face a fundamentally different change in their business model, how they make money. And it's going to cause them a lot of pain.

MCCARTHY: Phil Fersht, CEO of the research and analysis firm HfS in Cambridge, England, says India's tech industry isn't the only one affected 8.

PHIL FERSHT: This is a global problem where there's less need for routine transactional employees. And unfortunately for India, their IT industry is caught up in this inflection point, in this shift.

MCCARTHY: Indian IT giants including Infosys deny layoffs are occurring and say dismissals are nothing more than the result of annual performance reviews. But Fersht says the industry is being disingenuous 9.

FERSHT: Because there are layoffs happening. We know about them. There is no sugarcoating this. But what's happening is that the leading Indian IT services firms want to maintain their very, very healthy profit margins 10. And to do this, they want to reduce their reliance on labor.

MCCARTHY: Labor that has come to symbolize 11 India's rise, says K. Lakshmikanth, co-founder of Head Hunters India.

K LAKSHMIKANTH: Without the IT industry, we would not have built such a huge middle class in India.

MCCARTHY: Peter Bendor-Samuel says in this new transition, India's IT firms are not likely to replicate 12 the phenomenal success they have had as the world's back office.

BENDOR-SAMUEL: They are relentless 13 competitors, but they're moving from a world where they had the wind behind them to where they have the wind against them. And that's a very different world.

MCCARTHY: In fact, Bendor-Samuel says as currently constituted, Indian IT companies are in long-term decline. Julie McCarthy, NPR News, New Delhi.