Keeping up with rapid technological advancements is often seen as a major growth challenge for Indian MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises). At Amazon Smbhav virtual summit, while talking about skilling MSMEs and their road to digital transformation, NASSCOM’s Debjani Ghosh said that skills are rewriting the rules of competition in today’s world.
“You’re as good and as bad as your access to talent strategy is. We have to look beyond status quo to figure out a talent strategy which is about retention more than the recruitment,” Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM said.
She added that the demand for digital skills today is roughly around 8x higher than supply globally.
“The rate at which demand is growing, we expect it to reach around 20x in the next 1-2 years. It’s at a place where you have every right to be worried. That said, in the demand supply gap across the world, India is better positioned than the rest of the world. Our demand-supply gap is around 20 per cent while the west its 30 per cent plus,” she said.
She said as an industry we have to shift our focus from the great resignation to the great retention.
“We have to get obsessive about keeping the great talent that we have, how do we up skill and reskill them? That has to be a key focus. It’s very important for SMEs to start looking for alternative talent pools when they’re hiring. For example, much higher focus on tier2 and 3 cities, much higher focus on colleges and on hiring a diverse talent pool,” he said.
NASSCOM works with nearly 2000-2500 SMEs across India.
“Today the first thing on their list is skills and talent. Everyone has realized that your business success depends on people who use that technology to create a differentiation. The problem the SMEs are facing is that most of them haven’t invested in making talent strategies. You have to invest in culture and people at an affordable and a sustainable cost. The conversation has shifted from is it important to how do I develop it into a business strategy,” she said.
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