by The flood gates were open by the then Finance Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh to allow foreign investment into India in 1991. Since then India has progressed quite rapidly in the FMCG, Manufacturing and especially the IT Sector.
India saw a rapid influx of international IT firms such as HP, Google, Microsoft, Accenture set up shop in India. All these companies identified the potential and foresaw millions of dollars in profits reaping in a short while as soon as the IT Dot com takes off. Though the bubble burst in the early 2000’s due to the depression period in the first decade, most of these firms remained strong and committed to the goals
Alongside the international firms, impact of IT didnt exclude the Indian firms as well. Indian IT firms that saw a phenomenal rise in growth included Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys , HCL, Wipro and Cognizant Technology Solutions. Larsen & Toubro saw a late entrant to this sector but nevertheless doing really well..
The biggest impact of IT revolution in India was however on the job sector. Each company hired nearly 25-30,000 each year from engineering colleges in almost all departments. Earlier engineering colleges had placements that were attended by only core companies respective to that sector. However the IT majors found a huge requirement of software engineers in bulk and began recruiting on a very mass scale. This gave an opportunity from even small engineering colleges in Tier 2 and 3 cities to attend central campus placements and get a chance to work in a multi national firm. The opportunity to work in these kind of companies was never bestowed upon to these college graduates and hence it impacted the economy on a wider scale.
A separate category of people called “Software engineers” was identified by people who mostly belonged to one of these top 5 IT firms. Economy’s boost resulted in increase of land prices, rental charges and subsequently saw growth in retail sector as well. The increase in purchasing power of these people impacted the overall economy and the GDP. Software exports accumulated to several billions of dollars and the foreign exchange had recovered as well to a certain extent.
Not only did the IT sector worked for the MNC’s but India also saw several startups being funded by rocket VC’s burning a lot of cash and growing exponentially every single day. Some of the companies included Flipkart, Ola, Oyo Rooms, Snapdeal , Zomato and the likes. Incidentally these startups began to hire from the top brass of the MNC’s who also preferred to work on something exciting than the same usual stuff
The hiring of IT firms has considerably slowed down in the last 2 years, but the steady attrition rate in the companies has added to the additional requirements in recruitments
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
