India is moving fast in the digital race with focusing more on skills of Big data analytics and AI/ML

The need for skilling and upskilling reached a new high amid the pandemic and in 2022, big data analytics, along with AI/ML, are reportedly to be the most in-demand skills in India. With rapid tech adoption across industries and entirely tech-enabled sectors such as IT and BFSI, the role of AI and Machine learning will only continue to grow in 2022, with a significant increase in the demand for related roles. Industry reports suggest that AI/machine learning investments in India will continue to grow at a CAGR of 33.49 percent till 2023.

Demand from the Customers

To enhance customer engagement, more and more organizations are adopting chatbots which are forecast to empower approximately 45 percent of organizations' customer support services by 2022. The future of work is location-agnostic and hybrid, with increased skilling initiatives being undertaken by both employers and employees. Leading tech-enabled industries such as IT, FinTech, BFSI, and crypto will continue to flourish with talent demand spikes. It is also interesting to note that employee flexibility would be critical towards retaining talent in the future, and the Great Shuffle is a reinforcement of how the huge demand in the jobs market is opening the door for employees to select a career of their choice. The Indian fintech market is expanding rapidly and is estimated to become the third-largest market in the world by 2025.

According to the annual trends report, Indian IT has continued to hire through the course of the pandemic and will exhibit similar trends in 2022.

Demand in the IT industry

The IT industry is reportedly forecast to grow 7 percent in the current year and is likely to see a gross employee addition of around 450,000 in the second half of FY22. The top skills organizations are on the lookout for are Big data science, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, Blockchain, and machine learning. The demand for sales professionals is estimated to increase especially in industries such as fintech, retail, e-commerce, and social commerce. With a number of employees preferring remote working and staying in their hometowns, more and more organizations are considering setting up smaller offices in tier 2 cities or utilizing co-working spaces to provide employees with better resources and access to technology. This would, in turn, lead to an increased demand to hire across tier 2 cities in the coming months.

Hiring for freshers has picked up over the last three months of the year and is estimated to increase considerably in 2022. 

Startups and Small and Medium Businesses

The continuing emergence of startups will further contribute to the demand for entry-level professionals across industries. According to researchers, India has about 6.33 crore micro, small and medium enterprises. The number of registered SMBs grew 18.5% YoY to 25.13 lakh units in 2020, from 21.21 lakh units in 2019. As of 2020, registered SMBs were dominated by micro-enterprises at 22.06 lakh units, over 18.70 lakh in 2019, while small enterprise units went up from 2.41 lakh to 2.95 lakh. Midsized businesses marginally increased from 9,403 units to 10,981 units in the same period. SMBs and MSMEs are currently reported as employing more than 130 million people and contribute about 6.11% to India's manufacturing GDP, 24.63% of the GDP from service activities as well as 33.4% of manufacturing output.