India could face a shortage of 14-19 lakh techies by 2026: Nasscom-Zinnov report

Despite the addition of record 4.5 lakh employees to the tech workforce in FY22, the demand-supply gap of tech industry employee base is expected to widen over the next few years, a report highlighted.

According to a recent report by Nasscom-Zinnov, India is projected to face a shortage of 14-19 lakh tech professionals by 2026. As compared to the current tech workforce in India, which stands at 47 lakh employees ( 2021), the country needs 52 lakh tech professionals, it stated. This translates to a 21.1 per cent tech talent gap (as a percentage of supply), which is the lowest globally amongst all the leading economies.
 
By 2026, as per the report, India is estimated to have 75-78 lakh tech professionals, however the requirement may be of 93-96 lakh techies, reflecting a gap of 14-19 lakh tech workforce.

When it comes to the digital skills, the gap is even wider. The country right now has 13 lakh digitally skilled professionals and faces a shortage of 5 lakh such professionals. By 2026, this could turn to a shortage (gap of )14-18 lakh.
 
Which are the hottest digital skills in India?

Digital skills including Artificial Intelligence Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things and Cloud Computing are the most in demand skills, but also face a huge shortage of workforce in 2021 with the shortage of 1.5 lakh, 80,000 and 1.7 lakh domain professionals, respectively, as per the report. It also noted that the demand for the digital skills is expected to increase 3x by 2026 to 14-18 lakh .
 
When it comes to reskilling, India figures amongst some of the top countries which has been able to bridge the gap. It currently has 3.8 million digitally skilled professionals compared to 4.2 million in China and 4.4 million in the USA.
 
Harness STEM graduate supply:

One of the ways India can position itself as a global tech leader is harnessing the huge STEM graduates supply, which is second highest in the world, next to China . The report stated that the current 21.4 lakh annual STEM graduates supply in India is almost 4-4.5x US and that the 50 per cent in engineering and technology programmes posess higher rates of computer science and software skills.

Notably, India is ahead of the economies’ including the USA, UK, Germany and France when it comes to women diversity in STEM graduates which comprises at 47.1 per cent in 2020-21.
 
Digital skills still remain low amongst the graduates:

One of the reasons why the corporates are embarking on upskilling or reskilling the fresh hires is because the digitally skilled graduates' proportion is very less in the country, the report stated. Out of 21.4 lakh STEM graduates that India produced in 2020-21, only 10,000-15000 were equipped with AI, ML curriculum , 2,000-3000 with cybersecurity skills , 7,500- 10,000 with cloud computing and less than 1000 with blochain and 5G technology skills.