Over the past few decades, India has become a global hub for the information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) needs of multinational corporations. The country’s growing young and educated workforce is an asset that should continue to be leveraged for driving business growth. In recent years, though, the evolution of technologies and business requirements has outpaced the changes in academic systems.
This is only natural; educational curricula, unlike technology, cannot be updated or altered every few months or years. The resultant gap between academics and industry requirements would ordinarily have been a cause of concern but isn’t. This is largely due to the growth of Global Capability Centers (GCCs) of multinational corporations, which are ably complementing academic education in India with industry-ready knowledge and skills.
Many GCCs have been established since the middle of the past decade, and many more are either being set up or planned. While their original focus was on efficiently driving business processes at scale, over the years, this focus has transformed into areas such as R&D, Analytics, Digital Transformation, and Innovation.
As specialized roles call for specialized skills, GCCs are investing in skilling new employees and upskilling their existing ones in their respective domains of operation. This is not merely bridging the gap between academia and industry, but also setting up the workforce for career success.
Such industry-academia partnerships should be explored and continued with, as they are instrumental in producing job-ready graduates, which, in turn, has a direct bearing on the overall employment numbers in the country. According to NASSCOM, GCCs in India reported 75 percent growth in employment, from around 7,50,000 to more than 1.3 million, between 2015 and 2020.
Looking ahead, EY India projects that India’s GCC industry will employ over 4.5 million people by 2030, compared to the current base of around 1.9 million. It is an opportunity that the academic system and educational institutes in the country should look to leverage.
Community Manager.