Certain changes in the past two or three years could have a long-term structural impact on the IT services market.

'We will see a lot of investments from the private sector.' 'As long as we are not impacted by some global events, I think we will be in a strong place.'

Krithi Krithivasan is the kind of person one might look to when the need is to calm things down and put things back on track.

In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.

Of the 2,562 customer complaints received between January 2020 and March 2021, a majority relate to illegal apps. At least two dozen suicide cases have been reported, perpetrated by the harassment by loan app operators, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.

Attrition in India is expected to stay high as 34 per cent of the employees are extremely or very likely to shift to a new job in the next 12 months, a survey showed on Thursday. PwC's "India Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022" provided insights into important employee aspirations, drivers, and expectations from their workplace in the next 12 months. Among all the age groups, millennials are most likely to seek new employment, with 37 per cent stating that they are "extremely or very likely" to switch. For Gen Z and Gen X, this figure stands at 33 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively.

'Generic skills are in abundance, but technological advancements have left staple skills redundant.' 'It is why employers are now looking for alternate sources of hiring -- deploying gig workers, looking at Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities for relevant talent.'

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Why should your customers come to only you and nobody else? What particular problem are you solving? Solve these puzzles before launching a stat up suggests Rajiv Talreja.

The analyst community tracking the Indian IT services industry took special note of Accenture's first quarter (Q1) performance, which showcased the rapid growth of its consulting business that outperformed its outsourcing business. Bookings indicate that the trend will continue. Consulting bookings increased 41.6 per cent year-on-year (yoy) to $9.4 billion, higher than the 17.6 per cent growth in outsourcing to $7.4 billion. The management commentary was also more bullish on the consulting business.

Electric vehicle market is likely to attract investments of Rs 94,000 crore over the next five years and is expected to generate business opportunities in the real estate sector, according to a joint report by Colliers India and Indospace. The report 'Electric Mobility in Full Gear' mentioned that the electric vehicle (EV) industry in India is currently at a nascent stage but it is likely to grow, backed by government initiatives and a move towards recognising climate change. "India is taking a step towards sustainability and has vowed to cut its carbon emissions. "At the recently concluded CoP26 summit, India pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. "In India, the transport sector is currently the third-largest emitter of CO2. This is leading to increased thrust on EVs in India," it said.

The second quarter of FY22 continued to show double digit growth for the top four IT services providers, with every vertical and geography growing well, even though the total contract value (TCV) looked soft for all the players. The trend was first evident in Accenture's Q4 numbers, which saw its TCV in outsourcing deals softer. A soft TCV does not mean that growth is declining, but it does point to the trend of few and scarcer mega deals.

To cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government on Wednesday liberalised guidelines for voice-based BPOs removing the distinction between domestic and international units as well as permitting interconnectivity between all types of OSP centres. Broadly, the rules would allow global companies, say an airline, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that required dedicated, separate infrastructure previously. Moreover, the restrictions on data interconnectivity between any BPO (business process outsourcing) centre of the same company, a group company or any unrelated company has been done away with, allowing for massive flexibility in resource management for BPO operations.

The promoter-brothers, distant cousins to IndiGo's Rahul Bhatia, are eyeing Air India's ground handling subsidiary to augment their aviation services business even as they make a big play in EVs.

A candidate with good communication skills, critical thinking and problem solving abilities will have a higher chance of being hired.

Already 15-20 per cent of the workforce, earlier used to be procured from staffing firms and subcontractors, are replaced by freelancers tapped from platforms like Topcoder, GitHub, and Upwork.

Like everything else, the structure of banks may change, and banks may depend more on digital technologies and artificial intelligence for dealing with both their customers and employees.

The lockdown that crippled the entire logistics, delivery and supply chain network to near zero, was enough to deal a body blow to India's fastest growing unicorn whose very business model saw a severe disruption, like several other firms and sectors.

Researches reveal that many firms that employ H-1B workers directly, including some of the biggest names in the technology industry such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, Salesforce and Uber, pay a large share of their H-1B workers at one of the two lowest wage levels, Level 1 or Level 2.

'Their dharma propels them to pay their workers; otherwise, they know the boys would starve.' 'At the same time they will not allow their business to suffer,' observes Dr Sudhir Bisht.

Truth be acknowledged, Rajinikanth is not known for wanting to leave his comfort zone to take the politico-electoral plunge, even if it meant his becoming the chief minister of a state that has conferred Tamil cinema's superstardom on him over the past 25 years. Today, his fans belong to the younger generation all right, but their numbers are far fewer than their counterparts in the '90s. They are not devoid of personal ambitions and agendas, unlike what Rajinikanh wants them to be, if he and they were to enter politics, says N Sathiya Moorthy.

There is a high demand for IT professionals who can envision, design and develop applications for the future.

Experts believe modifying the placement model is a good decision given the changes that campus recruitment has undergone globally, says Vinay Umarji.

'India missed the software products revolution (and now is in danger of missing the platform revolution), complacent that we are the software experts of the world based on IT services prowess,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.

Experts said this would not only reduce Infosys' dependence on the H1B visa, which has seen increased restrictions under the current US administration. It will also help the company in building an employee pyramid for its future operations.

Titan expects sales of premium-priced watch sales to grow by leaps and bounds in the future on the back of a growing disposable income among working professionals and income categories, says Pavan Lall.

'The list of things to be done or added or removed will keep growing and it will be a while before the emerging models settle down into lasting structures,' predicts Umesh Shrikhande, CEO, Taproot Dentsu.

Employees are finding the 9 to 5 work cycles engaging anymore and are looking for greater flexibility, more challenging work, and new learnings.

IndiGo is providing digital solutions to everyday problems, attracting customers to digital platforms and engaging start-ups to find solutions

Despite higher gross additions, growth in overall customer base has been tepid for these companies, says Debasis Mohapatra.

'As the interest rates rise, people are going to say why should I be taking big risks when I can get 4 to 5 per cent in a bank account.' 'So, I think you have to change your thinking.' 'You need to look at the balance sheet, look at dividends.' 'These issues that have been ignored.'

Last year, there was almost 16 per cent increase in hiring by the Global Capability Centres in India.

The decision was in contravention of the provisions of the master services agreement signed between the company and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on October 13, 2008, says TCS

'Localisation saves a lot of time and cost for them. Keeping an eye on a long-term market, this is the best way these car-makers can build momentum for their brands.'

TCS is tapping an emerging opportunity called IT modernisation, which potentially could be a growth driver for the entire IT services industry for the next two to three years, says Raghu Krishnan.

Will Infosys, which will announce its Q2 results on Tuesday, be able to break away from the single-digit growth rates the IT services sector has been seeing?

Some 230 kilometres from Kolkata, in West Bengal's Birbhum district, 500 children stand out because of their 'unconventional' education, says Anjuli Bhargava.

'My simple instruction to every IBM salesperson is, "When you go to the customer, use less of this (he points to his mouth) and more of this (ear)".' 'Talk less, listen more",' Karan Bajwa tells Raghu Krishnan.

'India has 1 lawyer per 1,000 population.' 'Opportunities in the field of law are plenty.'

'What we are going to see is a large number of white collar jobs getting lost.' 'Job loss can drive people to depression, drugs, alcoholism and even suicide as there is no one to turn to when they are down.' 'There is no in-between now -- things go from a luxurious lifestyle to no lifestyle.'

Of the 3.9 million the sector employs, HR experts say at least 100,000 are likely to lose their jobs by the end of this financial year. Ayan Pramanik and Raghu Krishnan report.