India’s IT servicesNSE 0.04 % industry is unlikely to see significant job losses due to automation, at a time when only seven out of 100 tasks at tech services and business process management firms are automated, according to companies in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) space.
Use of RPA across various ranks has often created new job roles, but companies see increased need to retrain employees to fill those positions.
RPA firm Automation Anywhere said major tech services and BPM companies are seeing 5-7% automation of their processes across finance, accounts and HR functions.
UiPath, another RPA major, said the percentage of automation would vary, and could be higher than single-digits in some cases.
The $177 billion IT-BPM services sector employs nearly 4.1 million people and has renewed hiring in large numbers with a stronger focus on emerging technology skills.
WiproNSE 1.43 % said work done by bots in fixed-price projects has gone up from 11% in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year to 15 % in the first quarter this year.
“In the fourth industrial revolution, automation is becoming existential. We strongly believe that humans and automation will co-exist. As automation moves from low-end repetitive tasks to higher-end decision-making, we are up-skilling our workforce to take on roles in emerging areas,” said Bhanumurthy B M, chief operating officer, Wipro. So far, automation of processes across services companies has created more roles, and loss of jobs primarily due to automation may be negligible, analysts said.
“When automation happens across L1 and L2 (junior roles), then the L3 (mid-to-senior) requirements are increasing. Once certain roles become redundant, people will be redeployed in the new roles,” said Vishwakumar Nandagopal, Head of India Operations and Regional Controller for APAC at ISG, an IT research firm. For example, teams will be required to work on massive amounts of data and intelligence generated out of the RPA systems, and also to manage and support them, Vishwakumar said.
“We may see some need for retraining, and those people unwilling or unable to be retrained may lose their jobs. However, as the new jobs carry higher wages, we see most employees eager to make the transition. When we combine this with a shortage of talent onshore offsetting the desire to relocate work offshore, we do not expect significant job loss in the near future,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel, chief executive officer, Everest Group, a Silicon-Valley based IT advisory firm.