IT jobs to grow by 50% in city

KOLKATA: It���s raining investments and jobs just days into the swearing in of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government. A recent Infosys research portrays a sunshine scenario for IT and IT-enabled services in Kolkata with jobs set to grow by a whopping 50% in just a year.
The research puts Pune and Kolkata in the same bracket as centres of exponential growth over the next few years.Apart from the encouraging job prospects, the study forecasts the advent of international players from Europe and USA to ���captive centres��� (facilities set up to cater to the company���s own requirements) in Kolkata and Pune. With growth in captives restricted to 10 cities across India, the Kolkata market too is tipped to grab a sizeable chunk of the country���s IT pie.
IT secretary G D Gautama is visibly upbeat. ���Kolkata and West Bengal have arrived on the IT scene. Not only do existing companies want to expand their set-up here, new players are raring to enter. Kolkata has matched the national growth rate of 70% for the last few years though our base is relatively low. Our vision document envisages nearly 4 lakh IT and ITES professionals as compared to the existing strength of 40,000,��� he says.
Conducted by Manish Subramanian and Bhuwan Atri of Infosys���s Global Sourcing Unit, the research focuses on captive centres which are being used by IT-enabled players for offshoring work to India primarily for control over assets, intellectual property and core business activities.
A sample of 250 companies drawn from FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 lists were included in the study. Industry trends regarding setting up captives in India threw up interesting facts ��� European and American companies were keen to set up captives in India.
Bangalore is the leader in captives for IT and BPO. Delhi and NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai are next. Kolkata and Pune host a fifth of the number of captives Bangalore has but the scene is getting brighter.
The research however points to an imminent paucity of talent and infrastructure over the next five years. If current business plans are implemented, the number of captives in India be doubled in five years and the average size of captives quadrupled.
Aloke Mukherjee, president of Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says the business volume is poised for a boom as even medium and smallsegment companies are doing ���phenomenal work���. ���The growing pool of domain expert is playing a significant role in the expansion mode. There will definitely be a substantial growth in captive outsourcing,��� he says.