India HR report: Three industries on the edge

From South Korea to Australia, HRM Asia delves into the specific issues keeping HR awake at night in key Asia-Pacific markets as part of our Country Reports series. 

The first part of this India report is available here. 

With automation and artificial intelligence now at the forefront of global commerce, Indian businesses will need to respond quickly and decisively. The following three sectors are already feeling the heat, and need to be executing their response strategies now.

IT services

With low-level IT work like system maintenance and application development on the way out, Indian IT companies will need to begin offering more innovative solutions including cloud services – which currently makes up only 5% of the sector’s overall revenue.

The move towards this will lie in design thinking, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Thankfully, the change is now underway.

Business Process Outsourcing

India’s call centre expertise is well-known, well-oiled, and well-utilised. But that industry is not the vital, global service that it once was. Today, chatbots answer questions and even track the behaviours and lifecycles of customers. There is now a need for more India-based software and data architects who are able to build self-learning and intelligent machines to provide superior customer experiences.

Retail

E-commerce is killing brick and mortar retailers globally, including in India. Local e-commerce players like Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Myntra have changed the shopping experience through functions that can make highly accurate recommendations to customers based on their previous interactions. This, in turn, helps companies to plan their inventories, manage supply chains, and even plan their store strategies.

Traditional store associates, to keep up with machines, will have to learn how to read and rely on customer data in real time as well.