New jobs open up in IT sector in Kerala, but threat of layoffs looms too

The post-COVID-19 period has been a fruitful one for the IT sector in Kerala, as far as hirings are concerned, with a considerable number of opportunities opening up for freshers and lateral entries. However, of late, the news of massive layoffs by tech giants in the Silicon Valley, as among some startups in India, has been a cause of concern for the industry. Coupled with this is the kind of disruption being caused in the industry with the extensive adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies, which could make many jobs obsolete, even as it creates new opportunities.

Sanju Gopal, Thiruvananthapuram Center Head of Quest Global, feels that despite the news of recession, most of the IT services companies in the State could have ample opportunities in the current scenario, which will reflect in the hirings too.

“The volume of work now based on some of the technologies which are hot in the market cannot be fulfilled just by senior hands. We need to have a right mix of senior tech architects and junior engineers to catch up. Technological disruption used to happen much slowly in the past, now it happens in a few months or weeks. By the time you learn a new technology, it becomes outdated. So, continuous upskilling is necessary. Out of Quest’s 17,000 employees, 3,200 are in Kerala. By December, we plan to add another 500 employees in Kerala alone,” says Mr. Gopal.

‘Business volumes down’

However, K.V. Abdul Gafoor, president of the Calicut Forum for Information Technology (CAFIT), says that IT companies which depend mostly on the U.S., U.K., and European markets could find their business volumes decreasing in the present scenario.

“After the second wave of COVID-19, the occupancy levels in Cyber Park Kozhikode had touched 100% due to the increased hiring. Many of the companies here have business in other regions including West Asia, which means they will not be affected much by the crisis. As for my company, Infinite Open Source Solutions, which has 50% of its business in the U.S., there has been a delay in fund payments from that region. Now, we are looking to enter the rest of the markets to make up for the losses here,” says Mr. Gafoor.

Enter ChatGPT

Though automation, and its possible impact on jobs, has been a point of discussion in the sector for some time, the arrival of popular AI-based tools including the chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E has led to discussions on the adaptation of such tools for businesses. Last week, industry leaders got together at Technopark as part of an AI summit to discuss ways of preparing for the unpredictable future due to the evolution of these technologies.

Deepu S. Nath, Managing Director of Faya Innovations, an organiser of the summit, says that the next few months would witness major shifts in the industry, driven by automation. It could be a disruptive year for the sector and IT jobs, if the necessary upskilling is not done with the existing workforce, as well as with freshers.

Specific skills

“With the intelligent process automation that is set to take place, all companies will have a lot of business opportunities. There is a need to build awareness for early adoption of these technologies to make use of the opportunities. Jobs will open up in positions such as prompt engineering to teach the AI-based tools to communicate and to adapt these tools to various scenarios. Companies can use the threat of disruption as an opportunity. Here, there is still some reluctance to train for specific skills. For instance, when the companies listed several vacancies in the Skills Express platform under the Directorate of Technical Education, many did not apply for thousands of vacancies which asked for specific skills. The skilling gap has to be addressed,” he says.