IT industry body Nasscom has said that India has the potential to become the world's second-largest cloud talent hub with the combined effort of government bodies, education and skilling organisations and technology providers. It also said India currently ranks third globally with an installed talent pool of 608,000 (FY2021) cloud professionals. By 2025, India would have an estimated 1.4-1.5 million cloud professionals (baseline growth). However, it said with an estimated demand for over 2 million professionals by 2025, India could reach 1.7-1.8 million cloud talent pool with a fairly aggressive skilling roadmap.
It has stated that India's cloud market is estimated to reach $5.6 billion by 2022, a 26 per cent year-on-year growth. With rapid digital acceleration and everything becoming on-demand and need-based, migration to cloud-based services will provide a significant competitive advantage for SMEs and enterprises in the new normal. This is further expected to grow exponentially with accelerated cloud adoption across sectors. Infrastructural agility, flexibility, and resilience on cloud with significantly lower costs, especially post the pandemic, have been the key growth drivers for such a shift. The Indian SaaS (software as a service) startup ecosystem is another driver of cloud demand.
It further said SaaS companies in India employ over 40,000 professionals across job domains, more than any other tech startup segment, Nasscom said. With a baseline growth of 24 per cent CAGR, India's cloud talent pool is expected to grow 2.4X to nearly 1.5 milllion by 2025. However, there is an urgent need to scale talent further -- talent with the right skillsets -- that will help meet this demand. It estimates that with a more aggressive talent building roadmap (30 per cent-plus growth rate), India can increase its cloud talent pool to between 1.7 to 1.8 million and in the process, become world's second largest cloud talent hub.
