The hype over people advantage for ITeS (IT enabled services) industry in India nothwithstanding, the quality of graduates in the country are a major worry as far as employability in this sector is concerned.
According to McKinsey, apart from three places Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, the quality of graduates applying for jobs in the ITeS industry, especially in contact services like call centres, left much to be desired.
"Even though the country churns out nearly 100,000 graduates every year (excluding engineers), the quality goes down when we move from these three places. On an average, out of 100 people interviewed for ITeS job, only six qualify in these three cities. If we move out to any other place, this is not even two," Pramath Sinha, principal, McKinsey, said in Kolkata on Thursday.
Sinha indicated there was dearth of proper English speaking graduates. For the states, this means that they should work towards better teaching of English in schools besides building IT infrastructure in secondary schools.
India is trying to position itself as the preferred outsourcing destination for the US and the EU companies but the lack of communication skill in English in graduates could put it in more than spot of bother.
States
Other factors that might hamper efforts to raise ITeS exports from the country to $20 billion by 2008 include high telecom costs, regulatory problems like lack of single window opportunity, tax sops and ready infrastructure.
Other destinations like Phillipines, Ireland and Singapore are coming up fast in ITeS space and challenging India.
"Even though single window clearances are promised, one has to go to at least 40 places for clearances. Moreover, the tax sops are promised but not always delivered. Also companies look for ready infrastructure for ITeS industry, which is not available other than in Mumbai and Gurgaon," Sinha added. He was addressing at CII's 'IT East 2002' conference.
Speaking later Joydeep Sengupta, managing partner of McKinsey raised the issue that senior leadership should act as the investment ambassador for the country.
He stressed the need for flexibility in adopting policy changes to create investment environment.
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