The industry's warning
Rajesh Nambiar, president of NASSCOM, the trade association representing India's main technology industry, said that the adoption of artificial intelligence for basic programming and software testing activities could make it harder for new graduates to enter the technology sector. The statement, reported by IT之家 citing Nikkei Asia, concerns a market that until now has absorbed significant proportions of engineering and computer science graduates.
Nambiar does not indicate a definite timetable for improvement: according to him, the employment difficulty could ease only when Indian software-export companies have completed their adaptation to the new context. This is therefore a forward-looking assessment, not a definitive data point on employment.
From hourly work to outcomes: the gateway changes
The central point concerns the business model. With the reduction in the volume of work in traditional activities, such as technology infrastructure management, companies should develop new services: cybersecurity, AI consulting, and technology installation and maintenance. At the same time, the billing criterion is shifting from the number of people employed per project to the actual result. According to Nambiar, this change also alters the requirements demanded of new graduates.
On education, the NASSCOM president argues that universities must update computer science courses; otherwise India risks producing thousands of engineers with skills not aligned with companies' needs. It is an explicit statement of concern: without rapid adjustment of curricula, young people could discover at graduation that the skills they acquired are already outdated.
Numbers and limits of the transition
The material reports several dimensions of the phenomenon. The official estimates cited indicate 5,903 engineering and technology institutes in India in the fiscal year ending in March, with almost 2.6 million students enrolled. The sector is attractive because of high salaries, but graduate employment is already problematic: according to an estimate by Azim Premji University, between 2004 and 2023 the number of unemployed graduates almost quadrupled, reaching about 11 million.
Nambiar describes the current phase as a "rebalancing" of the sector, set to last until growth in AI-related activities offsets revenue losses in the maintenance of traditional IT infrastructure. He expects 80-85% of companies to survive, but some may fail to complete the transition because of their attachment to past management models. The actual scale of the employment impact and the ability of universities to reform curricula remain to be verified over time: the material contains no data on this point.
