Pramod Pachisia: Hello Everyone, I think we live now. So, hi everyone yeah, this is Pramod Pachisia CEO 2comms representing ISF today. And we have a very interesting session today trying to try and understand post pandemic opportunities in India. And we'll try and get perspective on the same. I have my panelist Manmeet who's the deputy CEO V5 Global Services consulting and board member of ISF.

Pramod Pachisia: We've got with us Navneet founder and CEO of Avsar HR Services. We've got Prashant who's the Director from TEKsystems. We've got Sameer MD and CEO Multiplier and we've got Sanjay. Who's head of search and staffing at Randstad. Okay, so with that leaving, no not having a delay, I'd like to straight jump into trying to give you a perspective of what we intend to cover today.

Pramod Pachisia: You know, India is a rich nation with talent in abundance. We have a population of 135 billion people. Sorry, 1.35 billion people. And that's a very large workforce standard for us that we have. 

Pramod Pachisia: $2.95 trillion economy at this point of time going very strong in terms of going on an average every year at 8, 9% and continue to do so.

Pramod Pachisia: We've got a median age group of 20 year at this point of time, which by 2050 is expected to be about 38. So that's like a huge talent pool that is going to be available. A young talent pool, a working talent pool that is available for us. Plan our next 15 years ahead, we've got current service exports of about $240 billion.

Pramod Pachisia: That's projected to go up one, one $1 trillion in the next couple of years, that's a very large number and I'm sure it's possible. We're growing at a very fast pace. Our digital payments. And I like to sincerely bring about this. Our digital payments currently is about 5,500 crores in the country, which actually fuels a lot of economy across the e-commerce and FinTech space, which is a very large space that we've seen growing in India.

Pramod Pachisia: Currently, we are about 42 billion transactions at this point of time and growing very steady. We have a lot of intact business coming in, which is enabling this for us at this point at this point of time. Speak while our staffing organized staffing members about roughly about 1.2 million.

Pramod Pachisia: We also got a 15 million big workforce at this point of time, which is accounted for as per various data points that we've got, which sort of completely shows the way in the models ahead for us, which the industry's going to see. We've got various sites you know, international sites like platforms like Upwork, which currently registered about 14% of the workforce from India at this point of time.

Pramod Pachisia: And they steady growth in those numbers as well. At the macro level, we have our education policy for a change, which is going to bring in. Change for the days ahead and years ahead to look at, because that's going to bring in reforms and where it's needed. Most of our vocational skilling across the country with the government initiatives and various programs is at full-time high.

Pramod Pachisia: We've got various bodies, trying to vocational skilling technology non-technology area, which is great to be a big boon for the if you know, the staffing industry and employment as a whole we've got a very large internet penetration across, you know, we have way strong, steady Telecom infrastructure, which is available last group last mile in radius villages at this point of time, connecting all the dots and needing to have a very large organized workforce with all these, you know, we only are headed for opportunities ahead.

Pramod Pachisia: With this, we can always look at all these and only point out in directions that India is the place to be with that. I will use more than two minutes with my fellow panelists. My first question too, is a question to Manmeet. Manmeet, what is the impact of technology? What is the impact of a pandemic in technology sectors that you see at this point of time post pandemic when we can, what do you see as the forecast ahead for you?

Manmeet Singh: So I think thank you Pramod for, you know, briefing us all about what's happening. Currently in the country, you see, there is a lot of shifts, quality transformations that we are currently seeing. It is there is you can see a hundred million workers in the as per the recent one of the surveys, a hundred million workers have to really change their occupations, you know, and this has never happened in the past.

Manmeet Singh: Obviously, because of, as you rightly speaking about the digital transformation, the payment gateways coming in, the payments that we're seeing we're seeing all of the global work companies outsourcing work to India in the business process management, as well as in the IT domain, the capital centers going up, our startup ecosystem, picking up the technology demand and the skill demand has really picked up.

Manmeet Singh: So in a very big way, and this is we see that this is going to be continuing to rise because of the remote workforce as well as the ability to hire people anywhere in the world. You know, so India is more and more going to be the talent bowl for the whole world right now. And I think the new skills required, which are going to be, which are going to be changing every week on the technology front.

Manmeet Singh: So I think there'll be this total shift in paradigm in terms of the talent supply chain. What I feel for the whole world, India can be the talent supply chain. And for that you see there is a big change of how people are hiring today. Employers are not only hiring in a traditional way of contract workers in permanent workers.

Manmeet Singh: They're going towards platforms to hire the thought process. Change of employees have changed the thought process now in terms of making new beginnings, making new changes in the career, which is very difficult, you know, it's a reboot kind of a thing reboot in terms of thinking of the thought process of employees, which is very good.

Manmeet Singh: As we see that people are changing jobs, people are taking up gig employment, seriously. People want to work, you know, on, on gig employment platforms, they want to make money. They want to change the direction, which was very, know, in the previous past era, we see that Indians were not very conservative in their approach, but because of the pandemic where we are in the middle of pandemic, right?

Manmeet Singh: And also people are very flexible and agile in terms of what they'll take up. Remote workforce has also added no geography, too back boundaries today. You see people are, you can hire anywhere in the country, people in anywhere in the world to work for your projects. That's also adding on to technology transformation, technology changes, you know, you have got great flexibility to have people, and you also see the diversity impact to diversity on all this in the employment landscape.

Manmeet Singh: Also a lot of women workforce retired because of the technology transformation they're coming into. We are able to employ as a, going to be making it more easier for them to hire talent now and making them work in reproductive. Yes, technology will be the background to all of it, to manage the workers, their expectations, their productivity changes, which is still a gray area in terms of productivity.

Manmeet Singh: And still people do not have full confidence in it, but because of the pandemic, we see a lot of changes happening now. And the last piece I would like to say is that retention and redeployment of these people, which are working right now, remotely the connection that people used to have earlier, and now today, more and more technology will play a big part there in terms of how you retain people and how you redesign your Perm and Temp strategies and how you are able to motivate them remotely and making them and report their productivity.

Manmeet Singh: So I think there is a lot of shift, which is we all have to go through and all of us are changing. We never imagined to hire people on, you know, on, not on a road, but working for a customer, but today it's true. Right? So a lot of good things are happening and things are changing rapidly.

Manmeet Singh: Thank you. Promod, 

Pramod Pachisia: Way rightly pointed out the Manmeet, I think if I have to you rewind back here we are a country going from the government job to gig model at this point of time. So except complete circle in terms of engaging the workforce at this point of time, you know, there was a time where we would, and I think continues to be that they're in a large portion of government jobs because stability was a first in primary choice.

Pramod Pachisia: And of course then comes the permanent private sector job. And then of course the staffing industry, but the world's changed. I think the way to gig is to model. I mean, it's a complete pyramid, which is opposite at this point of time. And that shifts we are seeing. Rural Development is a good change as well. That is happening. I think that's primary problems that we had, you know, because we have a large population in the rural countries at this point of time, which you get sort of the point box, so that with the internet movement moving or other, not wanting to move to urban because of the penetration, I'm sure the technology sector can get.

Pramod Pachisia: So I think very interesting perspective. I forgot to mention that Amit Dugal joined late. Amit we did not have an opportunity to get to introduce. Amit comes in from Meraki with a very strong platform in technology. Welcome Amit. So my next question is to Navneet. Navneet. There is a huge mindset change that we all have had to go through. You've covered a lot of sectors specifically in the large e-commerce blue-collar sector sectors. What are the kinds of changes in mindsets that you've seen in those sectors? 

Navneet Singh: Thanks Pramod, in my opinion, in pandemic or it's still, we are in the pandemic, as we know the biggest achievement for a need for all the staffing industry or organize the staffing companies for this in this country is that we have, we were successful in changing the mindset of employees and employers, both for corporate.

Navneet Singh: Also, we have changed the mindset because the way we have hired people, we have retained them and we have arranged and managed the mentor for them in, during all the first wave. Second wave. Third wave., I remember that a few of the staffing companies used to get the migrant workforce from the places like Bihar, Jharkhand or Orissa or any other places in the, in flight, private buses and all.

Navneet Singh: And the way they have managed them in places like Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Tamil Nadu. It's coming. So it changed the mindset of corporate also that a staffing organized staffing company is the best or organized staffing industry is the best way to go ahead for the staffing, same happened with the associates, also candidates or job seekers also.

Navneet Singh: Also earlier, they used to do it by themselves. Now they are taking help or taking support of staffing companies or staffing industries all across the locations, across the sectors and verticals. And they are also getting dependent on us, on staffing companies too, for all the support and the recruitment. Various labor courts or various labor laws, the way staffing companies are organized, staffing companies are following.

Navneet Singh: So we are they are way beyond in the traditional workforce. Like you recommend, send 1.5 or 15 million workforce that are still in our unorganized sector. So we are far better handling the organized staffing as compared to the unorganized sector. So in, during the pandemic, we have our organized companies has done vaccination drives.

Navneet Singh: They have given sources securities, insurance, ESIC application. So all these things have changed the mindset of both corporate and associates to go for the organized staffing companies for any labor requirement or any blue collar or even white collar workers. So this, I will suggest all, I point out that this is the biggest achievement or biggest thing which the staffing industry has achieved from the pandemic Pramod..

Pramod Pachisia: Very true Navneet. I mean, I think the staffing industry did show a very strong foot forward during pandemic and post pandemic and migration. Yes, it was a reverse migration, was a large challenge in getting back people back to a workforce was even a bigger challenge. You know, of course the reverse migration from cities to rural was a challenge for the individuals, but getting back to the workforce was a challenge, but I think we all managed to do that.

Pramod Pachisia: Very wonderful. Well, I think very rightly pointed out.

Pramod Pachisia: My next question is, you know, related GIGs in India is of course, a very large center for global now centers in various technology organizations. Yeah, my question is to Prashant. What do you see as the change in business strategy post pandemic with the GIGs, you know, and how do you think the staffing industry or by large industries are sort of, you know, acclimatized to the changes in this modification. Prashant. 

Prashanth Srinivasan: Thank Pramod. I think GIGs have been one of the large contributors in terms from from contracting and from hiring. So typically even prior pandemics, they used to have a normal code. So on an average, we used to see about a thousand plus requirements flow in every single month. But I think what we started to see post pandemic is that there was a significant amount of steep raise that the GIGs had.

Prashanth Srinivasan: Okay. And even as about 40 to 50% where the growth, in terms of how we started to see the rack flows, that started to happen. But almost 2,500 and an average a month. Right. And I think Manmeet kind of briefly touched upon on that in his opening is on saying why some of these steep increases started to happen was largely you know, the GIGs in India then being part of the business continuity for their headquarters, right?

Prashanth Srinivasan: You also started to see them drive a various digital cloud and data transformation out of India. And that contributed to a significant amount of a steep increase in terms of the demands that started to flow in, in, and in various customers. That's one of the things that we started to see and And especially topics like you know, candidate centricity and contractors, centricity, which I think has been around for a while, became a lot more relevant in a, in an, a post or maybe in a pandemic kind of a market which started, and as an organization attack, we've always had a very core belief of serving our you know, contractors and candidates a lot higher than you know, our own interest.

Prashanth Srinivasan: So we started to see a lot of appreciation from clients and from the candidate community. Simple examples, like, say, you know, hiring was just not a partner problem, right. It was also a problem where a hiring manager had to hire because you know, the role started to diminish and the engagement model started to diminish.

Prashanth Srinivasan: It's not any more perm or contracting, but it was more around saying I need to hire the right talent and the talent can come in from contract or can come in from perm. So we started to see those line of engagement start to diminish. So it was as much as a hiring manager's problem to attract and get great, you know, talent for their organizations.

Prashanth Srinivasan: And I think there's another earlier point that when we touched upon was also around on you know, the engagement is not just about hiring people, but I think since a lot of these projects were quite critical in nature, just not attracting talent, but it was also about retaining the talent, became one of the number one criteria as well for the hiring managers.

Prashanth Srinivasan: So, because they were no more doing very basic quality or basic development projects. 

Prashanth Srinivasan: Right. Because people started to work on very critical digital cloud and data transformation projects. So as an organization you know, we've been practicing this for about 38 years now. We started to see a lot of appreciation around candidate and contractor care centercity a lot more during a pandemic.

Pramod Pachisia: Sure true. I mean, one of the true challenges of course has been employee engagement with post pandemic working from home. While it has its benefits in terms of productivity, but that's not the way of life, at least so far and trying to retain talent or other, I would say manager rather keep them motivated and keep them collaborating.

Pramod Pachisia: Of course there are various tools to it, but you know, the human side continues to definitely be a question mark. And you know, it's tough, it's a tough workaround for sure, but I think we are coping for the same. So, yeah, I think that's interesting. So GIG is continuing to be able to adapt well to the situation. It is nice to know.

Pramod Pachisia: My next question is to Sanjay. Sanjay, what are the global stakeholders expectation from staffing companies from, you at this point of time in the and how does it impact us you know as a staffing partners, will they treat their clients? And of course, as you know, we, at the end of the day, work directly indirectly for the customers globally.

Sanjay Shetty: So thank you Pramod and a big hello to everybody watching the webinar. And I hope everybody is safe and well, as far as the global stakeholders are concerned, yes, they have some very specific expectations from any market, not just India and you know, a couple of things you know, that has been a very important learning for us here in Randstad.

Sanjay Shetty: You know, one is of course, you know, when organizations, whether they're client stakeholders or their other staffing firms, what they look for is political and economic stability. That is number one on priority. And I think it's important to talk about that. The good news is, we are you know, A-plus there, things are on the right path, as far as both those you know, metrics.

Sanjay Shetty: You know, and that's very critical as organizations look to come into India. A lot of them have come in different parts as either lease on offices and a lot of the ones that have not yet come to India are very aggressively looking at India. Some of the things, you know, or I would say the moves that the government has made in this part, number one is of course you Make in India, Digital India.

Sanjay Shetty: These are all very important initiatives, which creates employment, which is very critical for the staffing industry, the PLI system, and the production linked incentives. Again very critical. $26 billion has already been in investment mode in almost 30 sectors in India. And that's again very critical sectors like Textile, semiconductors, and it's all over the news.

Sanjay Shetty: So the government is very serious about investing and working with the corporate sector in developing these sectors, which obviously means more employment, both in perm and in temp. You know, all of y'all spoke about the startup system and it's so important to talk about it. Over the last five years, the number of startups have gone from 500, believe it or not 60,000 startups.

Sanjay Shetty: And these 60,000 startups have produced 600,000 jobs in 2018 alone. So that's a you know, job market there, which is there for the staffing space, ease of business. A single window clearance concept is very critical and the government is working on that. As far as staffing is concerned, labor courts play a very important role.

Sanjay Shetty: We have central labor rules. We have state government rules. What's very important I forget to mention here is that we have 44 central labor courts. The good news is as we speak, there's a process to consolidate those 44 into four broad labor codes. This will simplify business. This will make life easier for especially multinational organizations that are coming to India, as long as other aspect is concerned, which is obviously Talent.

Sanjay Shetty: Pramod, you know, spoke beautifully about this point. You know, India is the labor market of the world. And what better statistic then to talk about the demographics, the 15 to 20, 15 to 60 years category of people from 61% today, it is bound to increase to 65%. That means the younger population is going to get the net is going to get wider, which means a huge opportunity for staffing firms to capitalize on.

Sanjay Shetty: And these are very critically important aspects. The other thing is the opportunities per se the privatization, the public sector enterprise. Great example is the recent one, which is Air India, which privatized huge opportunities for organizations and staffing space. And, you know, I'm pretty sure this is the first one on the list.

Sanjay Shetty: These large projects definitely enabled staffing firms to think big. India is always going to be about volume. It's going to be about profits, but it's also going to be about the scale of these initiatives by the government. Also in terms of skilling the population, not only, you know, helping in manufacturing operation, but also scaling the population gives organizations the confidence that, Hey, not only do we have more jobs coming into the market, but the government and the private sector together, and also looking at skilling talent India still continues to be one of the most attractive staffing markets in the world.

Sanjay Shetty: We're still behind some of the other countries in APAC, but one of the most attractive and we're at about $5.5 billion today, even in the pandemic year of last year. We grew at about 5%. So as you can see when somebody measures the year on year, when we finish this year, it is going to be a huge growth.

Sanjay Shetty: So we couldn't be at a better time in India and all multinational clients of ours. And I'm sure the competitors are looking at India in a very attractive fashion and the future is going to be good back to you Pramod, thank you. 

Pramod Pachisia: Thanks Sanjay. You brought in a brilliant perspective to various aspects and you're absolutely right when it comes to the timing.

Pramod Pachisia: The timing is just perfect. We have a lot of startups and our startup economy is doing really well, which gives of course, a large scale deployment of workforce at the ground-up, but it also brings in a lot more age towards technology in terms of product development and enhancements, which is an area that we've always been a services country.

Pramod Pachisia: You know, we've got a very large technology workforce, but in the services. But now I think we've seen a large shift in terms of product development and that brings in a huge I would say the top line, or either the bottom line sort of increase for organizations, which is wonderful. I think with that, I would like to take the, what you have moving on to understand what's happening in the e-commerce sector, maybe the sectors around you know, you know, the new age economics at this point of time.

Pramod Pachisia: Sameer, my next question is to you you know, could you tell us what are the kinds of changes that you've seen post pandemic to make in purchase patterns and how it's impacted our retail and e-commerce industry? 

Sameer Mehta: Yeah, thanks Pramod. Thanks for the question. So see work from home and this hybrid model of working has really changed the way people purchase.

Sameer Mehta: And the purchase pattern has also taken a complete changeover. So largely the way things are shaping up is that people are sitting at home and really relooking at the household things. They're looking at the way various electronics are at home. So, maybe a might've go a refrigerator of 300 kg was good enough kilolitres was good enough.

Sameer Mehta: But I realized that I need to have a bigger one, right? Maybe I need to really spruce up this particular corner. I need to have a better place because what's been happening is that while we all have been operating out of swanky offices, now we want a swanky office at home as well.

Sameer Mehta: So that's where the purchase pattern has changed drastically and especially the working professionals. Now, while they've been forced to set up. They are relooking at the way things are at home, right? So they started really picking up small things. So maybe I had a semi-automatic machine, but it doesn't work anymore.

Sameer Mehta: I need to have a fully automatic machine because that solves my purpose. Right. And there is a joke around it. While men are being forced to wash the utensils all this, while this was fine. And we know that we don't have the help of domestic help. I am opting for a dishwasher now. Right.

Sameer Mehta: So I gotta place an order for a dishwasher and I need to really have that address. So, our organization works with a lot of consumer durable clients, and we realized that there's been a search for various products in the consumer electronics space. And everybody's really looking at Enhancing and really modifying various corners of home.

Sameer Mehta: So that basically has really changed the way people have started looking at buying things. Even retail was the way where people used to really experience the product, but the way the brands are operating is also that you wish to buy. I will have a demo at your place. And hence there is a source of employment now, right?

Sameer Mehta: So a lot of people who are working and operating from retail and trying to really sell to consumers at the retail. Now one person was addressing, say 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 customers at a retail space. Now these 30 customers need a demo at the same time. Hence you need to have more feet on the street to really be able to deliver a demo at the door steps.

Sameer Mehta: Right? So there's been a change that also there are brands looking at taking smaller things as well to the consumer and giving them more and enough options. So you shortlist say out of 50 products, I have you shortlist five. I will bring all these five to you at your doorstep. You choose.

Sameer Mehta: And you'll have the option to buy one. Right. We know the payment structure one of my fellow colleagues just mentioned about the way things have changed in the digital payment space. So people are making payments, sitting at home. Cash is not a problem anymore. Right. And if we were to look at online purchase has gone up drastically one of the cities which has really adopted one line is Bangalore.

Sameer Mehta: Right? So. 70 plus off consumers are now buying online, right? From 20% pre-pandemic to 70% plus now it's a huge shift, right? And how is this entire thing happening? Right? You still need people to be able to facilitate this entire purchase, right? So while we see that at all India levels in the consumer electronics space, it's like 15% growth in smartphones.

Sameer Mehta: It's like 10% plus growth over the last year. Right. Which is pre pandemic. So, which basically talks about that, that purchase patterns have not changed. People are still buying. It's the means and modes that have changed. Right. And you still need manpower. You need to, you still need staff to be able to really facilitate this entire purchase journey.

Sameer Mehta: Right? So that's been an interesting shift and I'm glad that this seems to be continuing and in the retail space also rather than more retail stores, it's becoming more of a retail experience zone for a lot of brands, which are a change now. And more and more brands are really looking at creating experience zones and experience stores to be able to really help the consumer fixing the slot so that it is sanitized.

Sameer Mehta: And I go there and I'm able to really make a purchase. Also, if you look at a lot of retailers, a lot of retailers around 70% plus retailers are looking at really inducting a lot of technology to the purchase cycle. Right? So if I walk in as a consumer, I see a touchless that will be able to bring me a demo of digital payment at the store level.

Sameer Mehta: Right? So a lot of change in the retail space is also being experienced in India and that's a huge change. And I think digital is the way. Back to Pramod. 

Pramod Pachisia: Thanks Sameer.You bought in a real world perspective. There's a different way of looking at how the business will grow. And I think that's really nice to hear your perspective and understand what you've gone through and experienced from your customers.

Pramod Pachisia: Yes, it is a change on ground and the staffing industry has been at the forefront of the e-commerce industry to enable customer experience, not just delivery, but as you mentioned, four or five products and you select that's complete customer experience. And that's what the staffing industry today in India is bringing a change.

Pramod Pachisia: Fantastic. My next question is Amit, we've seen a lot of technology and you, of course yourself, represent an organization which brings technology right in the hands of the blue collar workforce is we can call it. Can you tell us what kind of changes you are seeing to enablement of technology and the blue collar workforce, which has been adopted by the staffing industry?

Pramod Pachisia: I think we can't hear you

Pramod Pachisia: There seems to be a microphone issue with your microphone.

Pramod Pachisia: I think on the right side, you have an audio setting. Maybe you want to look at that. Maybe I'll come back to you on it in case you're finding it difficult. We'll come back to you on the point. Let me walk or we just wait for you there. If you want me to come back to you.

Pramod Pachisia: Okay. So I'd come back here with, thanks in case you're in the meanwhile you can fix it. My next question would be to Manmeet back to you, I think, can you give us a perspective of, you mentioned briefly on the gig workforce at this point of time. So how do you see gigs in these days of e-commerce as well as non e-commerce and in the technology sector. I mean, where do you see the adaptation? Why would people want to be a good worker, not a permanent job person light on the same. And this has been one of the most interesting keywords or Googled at this point of time. .

Manmeet Singh: Absolutely. So before that, I would like to just give you a little bit more on the skillset change that we are seeing in the industry today. Sameer mentioned is really true.

Manmeet Singh: Our expectations from a candidate has also changed, you know, a store manager earlier was only managing the store, but for a very large telecom organizations I've seen in some large brands, they're expecting the store manager, not only look out for the store sales, but also look after the area sales and also look out for the customer service of that particular brand.

Manmeet Singh: So the skill sets of the people have also changed and that you are expecting from a candidate now coming to the, you know, the gig workforce, which is very. You are here today. What's the outlook looking like, and you know, what's where are these gig workers and why is this by the change I touched upon in my initial address, that the mindset of people have changed.

Manmeet Singh: People had lost a lot, many jobs earlier. Some of the people because of the job loss have permanently thought, the thought processes changed to be a consultant in a white collar space. For example, you will also see a similar thought process where when you look at Uber drivers earlier, no longer is an Uber driver only gig worker, right?

Manmeet Singh: So there are people who will make money while doing deliveries of in, on the e-commerce segment, they will make more money than employment, so that the mindset change going towards, into deliveries. I am also seeing white collar segment, also hiring gig workers. We are seeing FinTech companies, especially in the startup world, activating the B2C consumer products.

Manmeet Singh: Recently, you must be seeing the payment banks coming in. You are seeing so many companies out there activating even small stores today. You cannot hire these people in as employees, because there are short-term projects of activating, for example, a FinTech product. So these activities, you see multiple thousands of people being hired across the country.

Manmeet Singh: Tier two, tier three towns, you know, delivering an activation, for example, an activation of a payment bank. That's number one, you'd also see gig workers and consultants who have transformed it from an employee to an IT developer and a developer or a coder. Now wanting to be working for a global, you know, platform like Upwork and in working from India to a global destination being a consultant.

Manmeet Singh: Thank you very much for doing that. You see retired workforce today, which is now thinking that I can work and make some good, you know, good use of my experience, but working for some companies, whether it is a domestic company or international company, retired workforce 60 plus 60 to 70 people also coming in as consultants to give you advisory in financial services or IT Sector.

Manmeet Singh: You, you know, you see at the, when I was also touching upon the ed industry and startups coming in edtech industry, which is, as you can see, most of the investments come coming to India and unicorns coming into this space, you see a lot of education you know, educationists, I would say coming into a gig working space because they're working from home on contracts.

Manmeet Singh: They would like to take a job of teaching kids. They would like to do a job of, you know, doing some work for an educational, super edtech company. So I think the mindset of coming into doing a job and getting paid for it on an hourly basis on a daily basis, and also have a sustainable sustainability of this particular job is pushing people to get into this kind of, once it is no longer a secret anymore, there has to be and going forward, it will be three, three pillars.

Manmeet Singh: The contract workers, permanent workers, and gig workers. It will be mainstream. Mainstream employment and employment across the world. India is no, no. You know, not also going to be witnessing the same growth here, people have, they want to take charge of their lives. They have seen that there is a lot of uncertainty in the times of COVID and they have taken the plunge of going out there and developing their own skills and also working on platforms or so working on contracts.

Manmeet Singh: So I think that's a good thing that people are going out of their comfort zones and trying to build their talent. And the last piece is that because of all these no longer, you need to retrain people in a classroom anymore, you know, because of bite-size learning concept because of the edtech companies, because of so many, so much of content available today to learn there, our schools, students, and college students launching their own companies while they're studying.

Manmeet Singh: Right. And I'm sure you must be falling off the shark tanks of the world. And shark tank culture is no longer going to be a, you know, it's going to be there because people are going to be more involved into doing innovative things in the country today and the young population. And as it has a retired workforce population, great opportunities for everybody in terms of technology, non-tech, retail you know, BFSI FinTech, which I was talking about.

Manmeet Singh: I think there is an, you know, as well as the Samir was also talking about how people are buying stuff in the retail store, but demonstration is happening at home. So, you know, those are workers who are doing all this work, right. We recently delivered a great project for a multinational form by 300 Housewives calling and doing the job for one month.

Manmeet Singh: And we invested, we actually got this project done in only two weeks. We didn't have to recruit people. We had a platform. We use the platform, we had 300 ladies working from home, did the campaign beautifully. So it is just giving an example and a thought process on where all these, and sometimes some of the jobs might not be very in tune with work.

Manmeet Singh: For example, you have cybersecurity, you have secure platform development. You need milestone-based development to be achieved into certain development exercises. There, you might not see gig workers coming in, but other than that, where you have customer services, where you have feet on street activations, you will see ed tech.

Manmeet Singh: As I was saying, there is a lot of penetration happening there Pramod. 

Pramod Pachisia: Thanks, Manmeet. Thanks, done. My next question is to Sameer, what's the change that you see? I mean, when we brought in one point of gig workers, contract workers and permanent workers working together, where do you see, how do you see this happening in the e-commerce space?

Pramod Pachisia: We work a lot with e-commerce and retail. 

Sameer Mehta: Yeah, thanks Pramod. Pramod, as I mentioned earlier, that the purchase pattern has gone through a certain amount of change. And as a consequence, this led to a service at the doorstep. You know, e-commerce has really started the meeting, the expectation, exceeding the expectation of their shopper.

Sameer Mehta: So the way they're managing this entire thing is that you place an order and I deliver within 24 hours, 48 hours, you know, you have a prime membership and hence you get a priority over the other customers. So there's been a complete shift in the way they manage this entire backend. And the backend is being managed again by a lot of these gig workers, right?

Sameer Mehta: One of the data points, which says that while we speak we have 15 to 16 million gig workers in India, which is likely to grow to 70 million in the next 8 to 10 years, that's a change and increase in the overall number. And as it rightly mentioned by Manmeet, it's by choice.

Sameer Mehta: Right? And secondly it's also that a lot of brands and a lot of companies are looking at performance based pills, right? And you deliver this, you get paid this much, right? May it be logistics, may it be delivery, may be creating an experience, maybe may it be onboarding a retailer, right. So we all know why we work in India because your digital payment gateways are onboarding a lot of retailers to use the digital payment gateways.

Sameer Mehta: Right. And there's a huge competition there. So everybody's going out to the same retailer. And they're saying that you work with me and I pay you X percent commission. Now, how does that happen? Somebody has to go convince the retailer as well and onboard that retailer onto that payment gateway. Now that's pay for performance, right?

Sameer Mehta: So there are a lot of changes in the similar direction, which is very performance based. And also if I was to look at the personal services we know a couple of brands like Urban clap, Urban company, right? Personal services, transport, logistics, and retail collectively contribute to 11% plus overall growth in, in the sector itself.

Sameer Mehta: Right? So that's a huge shift. And we will see this more often and bile may have similar sessions. We will see the numbers change today. I mentioned 15 to 70 next year. I may be saying no 15 to 70 was a lesser number and it may go up 100. Right. You never know. So the kind of a change in the entire gig workers space.

Sameer Mehta: Thank you. Thank you. Pramod. 

Pramod Pachisia: Thanks Sameer. My next question is to Prashant. What kind of skill stacks have gone down more to absolute you know, I've, we've got some questions trying to understand industry and whether we forward in terms of skills are, so what kind of skills do you see? Really the GIG is wanting to sort of, look forward to the recent times.

Pramod Pachisia: And how do you see staffing industries are shaping up and cooking up at the scene? 

Prashanth Srinivasan: So, thanks Pramod. So I think we, the first thing we just want to build on my previous point that I was sharing on saying today, we start to see an increase the amount of diminishing between real on jobs versus contracting job, ask the GIGs are going through and driving a lot of digital transformation, cloud and data.

Prashanth Srinivasan: Right. You know, today increasingly a lot of perm jobs have started open up in Contract. Okay. That's one clear thing that we started to witness with the various GiG's or even a little bit of tech product companies as well. So where the clients really don't matter the kind of engagement model that you bring a talent, but what it certainly matters to them is saying how these kind of workforce can really, and what type of people and workforce can come in to support them right now, while I say this and I just wanted to take a quick small illustration in a banking financial services, right?

Prashanth Srinivasan: So if you take payment, it says today in the pandemic era. In other banks have started to even for their own internal processes. The client onboard is completely done online. Government wanted the banks to go completely digital. So started to kind of inforce the whole digital journey for various GIGs in specific to banking and financial services.

Prashanth Srinivasan: So the existing platforms where, to which the payments gateways have been built, do not really support the kind of level of volume or traffic that kind of today exists. So the whole architecture at which the payment gateways have been built requires a complete re-architecture. Okay. So now that kind of started to build with various technologies.

Prashanth Srinivasan: Like I'm sure. Java has one of those hot, most top you kind of do Google, you will, everybody will kind of figure it out and everybody in anybody would need a Java backend and Java front end resources being on the IT contracting staff. Right? 

Prashanth Srinivasan: So that's one skill that started to really see, take off like anything. And the reason why some of these skill sets started to become very important is also when you understand the client.

Prashanth Srinivasan: What transformation that they are going to. That's one end of the story. The other, if you look at the cloud part of the piece right today, India is very open and very favorable in terms from having cloud setups out of your, in India. So, you know, you would start to see a lot of AWS, GCP which is Google Cloud Platform right today has started to increasingly see demands and forecasts.

Prashanth Srinivasan: So now where there are these jobs do we have talent available for these. Well, honestly, not so pretty much whether it perm on contract or on contract, we can have a struggle to identify some of these talents coming up. Right. What we've also learned is that a lot of reskilling that's happening within the industry, right?

Prashanth Srinivasan: Where you can't produce somebody, who's a GCG person right off the shelf. What we also starting to see is that customers are very open today to do higher end deployments, a model they're willing to locate young talent who could be brought in by being certified, working on certifications. That's one thing that we are starting to see. While I say this I think Manmeet spoke about a little bit on the skill sets, right?

Prashanth Srinivasan: So today, what we're also learning is that, the rate at which you know, the amount of skill sets and technology stacks are coming up in the market and especially in the IT, in the Technology side, right. One cannot really keep up the pace. What we're also seeing is that you may now start to need skill sets and talent, which is very specific to each of those roles.

Prashanth Srinivasan: So I will give you a simple example today. Earlier it used to be, if somebody were to be on C++ they could easily migrate and become a Java developer. Okay. But if you look at the roles that are expected and skills that are coming in, you will need very specialized people to do specialized work. So what we may increase to start to see is that the stacks are now becoming very non fungible in a way.

Prashanth Srinivasan: Okay. So which means that no more, that you will have people to go on one skill sets and upgrade. So you may require very specialized people to do those work. So we've certainly seen. That's one area that we suddenly see and the other element on the pandemic part you know what, we started to see subgroups, everybody where to say that, okay, Hey, you know what banking art, the large, but within banking, we started to see a lot of payment kind of drive a lot more within healthcare today because of the pandemic there a lot of organizations today.

Prashanth Srinivasan: We're doing clinical research for Pfizer, for GSK or AstraZeneca. So a lot of data you know, started to be maintained about people that start, that kind of work started to come into India. So we saw a lot of data warehousing skills and really you know, being looked after. And the lot of people had to be.

Prashanth Srinivasan: So there was CRM like Salesforce SFDC became one of those top hot skillsets again in the market. These are some of the areas that trends and skill sets that we certainly saw Pramod during the pandemic. Right. So, which were quite hot on the market. 

Pramod Pachisia: Through I think that's very true Prashant

Pramod Pachisia: this been a huge lot of change. I think while we've got technologies like Java, which always continue to be required, but I think there's loads and loads of skill sets coming into no-code platforms and lo code platforms. So many multiplication applications. I think the speed at which skill changes today, or rather required, is moving really fast.

Pramod Pachisia: You know, I think Amit is back. Can I get my question back to Amit? And I mean, goodness. Yeah. 

Amit Duggal: Apologies. 

Pramod Pachisia: No worries at all. Good to have you back.

Amit Duggal: The question was about, I think about the

Pramod Pachisia: enablement

Amit Duggal: because we have a workforce management platform. So what we create, we are for whom we are creating, we're creating for a very low strategy people. So the chat, there were several challenges, but there were a lot of. And what was the learning that we are to create a tech, which can reach masses. These are, you know, masses and the people who are at this level of startup are not available on the platforms where we can go and simply reach them, tell them what are the opportunities available?

Amit Duggal: Come join you know, on a living or build a career. So, whenever we were building a tech, we had to, you know, create two kinds of experiences. We have to look into the user experience and the user interface. Also the tool which we were developed needs to be simplified to a level where, you know, where this tool not only reaches the masses through the social channels available, but also uses various API of whichever are available and also uses the data which is available on all the government sites.

Amit Duggal: So their auto population on the data can happen. For example, when a person is at a level of, let's say you know, the housekeeper would, if I, even if I give him best of the tools, he will, he might make a mistake while recording his bank account. So that IP is available in the market, which you use, you know, to ensure that the data is captured in a way that it's foolproof and also this kind of people, what we have seen is that we have to give them some kind of supervision.

Amit Duggal: So the layer of supervision is built while you created to you know, not only for the supervisors who are available in the field for the client also. So when I say supervisor, client, they also have an interface where they can check, monitor, help these kinds of people to, you know, really use the technology to give the data what is required either for their job or for, to make their life simple.

Amit Duggal: You know, and while also creating a tool, which we learned that you know, even after geoification of the India areas, there are a lot of places where, from where we are sourcing day in, day out people, and it's very difficult to get connected with them because the smartphone penetration is not available.

Amit Duggal: You know, they are not very friendly, still the, what we feel this kind of gives, or the, you know, the SMS, a facility, which is available, still plays a law, you know, a good role in whatever we are doing today, know? And the facility, like, you know, he gets a call saying that, you know, if you are interested press one, not interested press 2 are still there.

Amit Duggal: So what I meant by overall saying even after putting the best of the OCR and everything, what we see is that tech user interface and the experience, what these kinds of people actually require has to be simplified to the level where it's available or in his own language. It's so simple that he has to just put two, three data points and the rest, all data gets captured since he has visited many centers, voter ID card, aadhar, other everywhere, now.

Amit Duggal: So, but there is a challenge with the government API is that all the government data, which is available is the API, is not open. So there are the level of sources from which you get API, but still the request to the government is to really open it up for those for an employer like us, it really becomes very easy to onboard.

Amit Duggal: To read somebody if you have the right data in place, that's what my, you know, even after putting the best of it.

Pramod Pachisia: So prashant, I hear, I think when I hear that the industry is taking up and capturing or other industries trying to adapt, and there are problems around it that you see, but it's good to see that we are trying to overcome the same user interface kind of discussions have started happening for the last bottom of the pyramid. Absolutely. In the blue collar space. That's a huge need during the post pandemic. The need is only higher at this point of time because the number of touch points that we have as an opportunity on the shop floor is always much lesser at least so that's very interesting.

Pramod Pachisia: I think Sanjay I'd like you to cover the same point. Maybe not from a, you know, I mean, he's brought in the blue collar workspace. Can you help us to understand technology usage for the staffing industry by and large? What's your perspective?

Sanjay Shetty: Sure. Thank you Pramod from just going back to one of the comments that you mentioned that gig is probably the most searched word on the internet.

Sanjay Shetty: I can bet you top dollar that the second most searched word will be work from home. You know, we just released a future of work report and it's very clear, you know, you look at the responses in this report that work from home is here to stay. If you actually go back, you know, if you just look at the chronology before the pandemic, it used to be worked from the office.

Sanjay Shetty: Then during the pandemic, it is work from home and over the last, I would say 8 to 10 months work from home has actually transformed to work from anywhere because it's not necessary that you have to work only from home. You have people who are in, you know, different destinations and know doing work seamlessly.

Sanjay Shetty: So the entire paradigm has shifted. And Navneet, that's the one very important point about mindset. The mindset has changed for both the employers and employees, and that's very critical and it has a direct correlation to staffing coming to the impact of technology. It is technology that has become the pillar.

Sanjay Shetty: The main state that, you know, most things revolve around most sectors. And definitely the staffing sector is no different. If you categorize it different aspects. First, the sourcing or the candidate acquisition perspective. It's interesting to know that 75% of resumes are actually unqualified. And this is where technology plays a very important role in machine learning through AI of increasing the accuracy.

Sanjay Shetty: And we're seeing that accuracy in all organizations, whether it's staffing firms or whether it's the employee themselves benefit from that's the first part. Second is the entire process of onboarding in staffing, which is a huge, which is the bulk, which is the bulwark of the staffing organizing.

Sanjay Shetty: And that's where the heavy lifting work between the staffing firms and the customers happens, the entire process of onboarding verification, payroll management, clocking, clocking out attendance, leave records. All of these were very paper intensive. If I can use that word a lot has changed over the last years, everything has become virtual.

Sanjay Shetty: And this is where technology has played a very important role, which has also led to the emergence of a lot of HR startups. In fact, Randstad has a Randstad innovation fund that we, you know, created or five to six years ago specifically because we saw this as a huge opportunity for this industry. So clearly technology is impacting the way we source candidates, the way we manage payroll and not just you know, typical staffing, but also a lot of organizations, including Randstad, does activity-based staffing here.

Sanjay Shetty: Again, technology plays a very important role. Smartphones are no more you know, necessarily everybody's got a smartphone, some very interesting statistics that I discovered in the course of my prep. Out of the 7.9 billion people that exist on this planet, 6.4 billion smartphones are there, that's almost 80% penetration.

Sanjay Shetty: It's fantastic information. And it tells you about how the entire way that we consume smartphones and technology has changed. And this has a direct correlation to how staffing firms have evolved and will continue to evolve using technology, making processes much more automated and simpler. We did some analysis and we've realized from Pramod that our efficiency and productivity has improved by almost 30 to 40% over the last couple of years, specifically because of technology, because of shortening processes and improving productivity amongst our workforce.

Sanjay Shetty: It also blends in with very interesting you know, the three P bottom line approach that we have in Randstad, which is People, Profit and Planning. Planning is very critical. And often we feel that it doesn't get to. We're seeing a lot of paperwork. There's a lot of paperwork that is now digitized and automated.

Sanjay Shetty: Can you imagine the thousands of payroll records per customer that we used to do? It's all automated right now. So this in a sense is really helping us drive efficiency, productivity, and staffing firms that give it back to customers. So technology clearly, you know, it's turning the tables around and everybody's benefiting from it.

Sanjay Shetty: Yes. You know, as Amit mentioned, there are a couple of other things that we need to be careful of. For example, the penetration of technology in second and especially third cities, this is where, you know, we need to look at these and this is where the government and the corporate sector needs to come together so that we are able to improve the infrastructure so that we can leverage the entire talent pool that is available in India.

Sanjay Shetty: Thank you back to you Pramod. 

Pramod Pachisia: Thanks a ton. I think it is a very interesting perspective. I hope some organization can use your innovative fund and to compete also very bullish about HR tech. I think just to give you a perspective that current business volume worldwide on HR tech is about $22.8 billion. That's a large amount of money going after HR tech.

Pramod Pachisia: We've invested ourselves on a platform, which is a gig tech platform we try to connect with. So that's an investment, I think all staffing organizations in one way or the other would have to. We have to adapt to technology and changes. That's wonderful. So I think now my next question is to yeah, I think my next question is to Amit, back to you, can you give us a perspective of you, you also touch upon the manufacturing segments.

Pramod Pachisia: There is a question here in the you know, panel here talks about what the industry is doing. Well, can you take us through what are the sectors in manufacturing that you see post pandemic, which are going how's that shaping up? Because there's a lot of interest in trying to understand what sectors we'll probably see upcoming demand.

Amit Duggal: Yeah. Thank you Pramod for the question. If you look at Meraki overall as a business, whatever business we do in a staffing space, the majority of the business, which we do is into logistics e-commerce and then manufacturing. And we have been studying this Post pandemic and pre pandemic. Also the scenarios have been a little different.

Amit Duggal: Some of the sectors in the manufacturing side, which we feel are doing really well and are not prospective prospects for us in terms of business are electronics, textile, farm equipment. And then we also see not very large surge FMCG, but we do see it as a promising factor.

Amit Duggal: Keeping in mind that you know, in the pandemic we saw that FMCG and pharma were the only manufacturers who were not really affected, which is a reality known to the entire industry as of today. But electronics, textile and farm equipment are doing really well now because the government itself is trying to put more emphasis on the Make in India concept.

Amit Duggal: When this is because the government doesn't want these manufacturers to go outside India and that they want, they're giving them things like PLI schemes have been opened up for all these sectors which were closed in between. And then again, reopen for another five or six years or 10 years so that these you know, manufacturers manufacture more and get incentivized for the, all the, know, what exactly were incremental sales, which they do from the base here.

Amit Duggal: If the base year was last year, whatever they sold. And then if they're doing better, better, they get incentivized to 3 to 4% of the, you know, revenue is given by the government as a cash back or you know, kind of subsidy to them in the tax. This is helping a lot in manufacturing and the kind of skill set which we see.

Amit Duggal: There has been a little shift in manufacturing. Particularly in another sector, which in manufacturing is precision components, which is you know, auto, ancillary which is required by almost all the biggest as of today. So we see the skills kit earlier, where you know, more from the diploma and the other background, but as a Meraki, whatever interactions we have been having, and we have been placing almost you know, three, 4,000 people month on month.

Amit Duggal: And what we see is that the skillset now, the requirement is only 12 pass. All these consent requirements are only ITI guys to the industry opening up to these kinds of people where they say, okay, give me a guy who can understand right. And willing to do hard work. I will train him into my machine line and employ him.

Amit Duggal: And then on the retention sector retention side we have seen that they are encouraging us when we went to them. We said, we will give them a kind of a job insurance scheme, we'll give them a, know, early salary scheme or a loan scheme, which is predominantly not available to this, you know, associates or the candidates.

Amit Duggal: When we say, as we call them associates because they are associated with task. So, companies are, you know, helping us and they are encouraging us to do such kinds of schemes. Even companies themselves are started doing many manufacturers. They used to give them you know, sorry to say this because as a staffing company, also, we were only using these people as numbers.

Amit Duggal: So, but they have their own human side. Where they are, their own needs, their own priority citation. Like they would like to have a job near to their home, but are not like to travel too far, you know, social security kind of insurance covers. So all these things as a work management platform, we have been going and filling lines after talking to the candidates or the masters who we interact with that these are the requirements which they have and the clients have now started recruiting them at the nearest location possible earlier.

Amit Duggal: It was like, you know, in manufacturing in Noida I would say no, I would only like to have people right from Bihar, Jharkhand or from Assam. These stay longer with me, but now the case is different. So now the Noida manufacturer is willing to take people in and out there on 150 yards or your hundred kilometer radius area.

Amit Duggal: The industry is opening up. Another fact is that demand is up. So probably this is one of the reasons why they are cutting down the kind of requirements, which they used to emphasis on before that and helping the staffing companies to place more and more manpower. What we have done is that we are partnered with some end-users and some, you know, local punch ads where we are able to get people.

Amit Duggal: We have created a training program because we know which are the industries. They require people, we train them in batches and then we take them to the manufactures. It totally helps in a way that from the day one, this trained guy is a little more productive compared to the guy whom they taken, and then they give a training on the job, but we are seeing a very good shift in a manufacturing site, almost all the you know, manufacturers kind of manufacturers, which I mentioned are doing very well.

Amit Duggal: And we see that going forward also, this trend will still go up, will not come down. 

Pramod Pachisia: Thanks, gentlemen, I think I was happy to catch two phrases from you. Numbers are what staffing companies you would do. And now we'll have to look at the human side of things and that's exactly what our company's punchline is.

Pramod Pachisia: Or another value statement. The human side of things. So we have to move from numbers to the value of an individual and look at how we can focus on upskilling the individual and empowering the individual. And that's exactly what the staffing industry in India is taking shape. We are almost over, I think, thanks a ton, for this organizers who have given us some additional time.

Pramod Pachisia: I have a last question for Navneet from a completely different perspective. How do you see women empowerment and diversity taking shape post pandemic, hardly impacted, not impacted? You see them growing, what's your perspective to them?

Navneet Singh: Thanks Pramod. I see an inclination in the participation of women in a workforce.

Navneet Singh: As soon since dependent begin, I can tell you that 6% increase in women participation is that in India and it's majorly because of the culture of gig workforce and Work from Home options and is gave freedom to women to work for home and work from home simultaneously, some government initiatives like maternity leave, longer maternity leave, also supported women for pursuing their career and working while pregnancy or post-pregnancy.

Navneet Singh: But the most important thing is the gig culture, which encourages women for taking participate in the workforce. Like they got the freedom to choose the time slot in which they want to work. They can work from home, or if they have to go out, they can choose the time slot. They can choose the days in a week in which they can work.

Navneet Singh: And in which they cannot work, they should not work, or they don't want to. So these are the things which are encouraged by women. And the participation of women in the Indian workforce increased by 6%, since the pandemic began. One of the most important factors, which I can witness, or I can tell you that encourages women for come out and work in a company is like working in the manufacturing sector or e-commerce segment.

Navneet Singh: And all these things are now being taken care of by organized staffing companies. So they are more comfortable or they feel more safe if they have been handled or taken care of by organized staffing companies as compared to traditional contractors and they are getting better treatment, better job security, better social security from the organization.

Navneet Singh: So these 3-4 things has triggered the women more and more women are coming out on actively participating in Indian workforce Pramod 

Pramod Pachisia: thanks Navneet, I think way through, I think a combination of remote work, we hire train, deploy, and, you know, being able to engage women workforce or diversified pool, which wasn't available so easily or wasn't at the first for the, for forefront would actually be a huge boon for our country at this point of time with interpenetration being very high.

Pramod Pachisia: I think these are wonderful times to engage in new models of workforce. With that I think our session comes to an end. I wanted to just check if there are some questions that we can take at this point of time. There are some questions on the chat window. I see one from sudesh, which is, there are a lot of changes happening in the demand in, in IT demands a different skill sets requirement visit with earlier.

Pramod Pachisia: Okay. What role do you see the government playing in rapidly changing the you know, taking care of the skill set requirements. Manmeet would you like to take up that or any one of my panelist? 

Manmeet Singh: I could take on that. So I think just to give this a lot of booths, I recently had competition with NSDC and so these agencies are working towards this, a lot of focus in terms of upskilling and from the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry, as well as the IT.

Manmeet Singh: And so the focus on developing these skills on IT, technology, communication, media, that's what they are working towards. A lot of funds have been located in terms of future skills, primarily launched by the government and as farm as well as the government. We're launching these schemes to upskill people on not only technology guys, but also non-tech guys getting the basics of technology right because you're going to be having a foot in the street working.

Manmeet Singh: You know, on activating a FinTech platform, for example. So he also needs similarly manufacturing. I also needs to be strong in technology background, BFSI insurance you know, and there are startups, which are coming as you will see maximum unicorns of the country, a lot of focus on skill developed skill development and new age skills, which are going to be helping us, our unicorn.

Manmeet Singh: We are the unicorn of the whole world now. So I think that's going to be helping us to enabling all the talent coming in the additional workforce, which we have seen. I'm sure that's going to be a lot of opportunities for talent. And the second thing I was seeing also, just outside of this question, while the opportunities are upskilling and learning, is there, the hybrid workforce absolutely is going to be here to stay.

Manmeet Singh: You want to be seeing vaccines. Two third of employers have made it mandatory or will be there. You will see a hybrid workforce or for all skill sets is going to be there. So you will absolutely have more opportunities to learn and more investments by the government coming. Into these kinds of skill sets, basically.

Pramod Pachisia: True. Thanks to Manmeet you're absolutely right on the point that while technology comm skills need to be upgraded, even non-tech workforce needs technology. And we recently did a program with AWS to target the non-tech professional to sort of become cloud or friendly at this point of time. And that's a huge need and a lot's happening through the platform of NASSCOM IT and various other platforms on the same. So I think we are safe on that side that we are making the right steps of investments as a country, as a, at this point of time. I'm just checking if I have a few more questions, if there are any I think there's one question which sort of gets answered by Sanjay on the chat and thanks Sanday for that.

Pramod Pachisia: I think we are good with all our questions now. I don't see any more questions that brings us to an end to the session. I thank the World Staffing Summit. Who have given us the opportunity. And I thank all my fellow panelists who have joined me in making this happen. And most importantly to the members were sort of attended the same today.

Pramod Pachisia: I hope you've been able to bring some perspective and value to the same. Thanks everyone. It's been really nice.

Prashanth Srinivasan: Thank you.