Home-grown talent, a hallmark of TN’s IT workforce: PTR

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu is by far the biggest source of talent in the country and relatively speaking, quite a big source of talent in the world, said Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, IT and digital services minister, TN, on Friday.

He made this observation in his special address at an event hosted by the iTNT Hub along with Austrade delegation, comprising the Australian consulate general-Chennai, Silai Zaki and 17 tech startups from Australia, here.

“My personal experience, if I find, let's say 100 top Indian executives across technology, banking, healthcare, you know, various sectors around the world, in Australia, in the UK, the US and Europe, Tamil representation will be between 20 and 30 per cent, again, 6 per cent of the population, 20 to 30 per cent of the top executives in whichever industry you name. That has probably been our driving strength,” he went on to add.

Thiaga Rajan also noted “the most remarkable fact about TN” is that with slightly less than 6 per cent of the population, “we produce somewhere around 20 per cent of the country's tech talent, that is people graduating from STEM, from polytechnic, from technical training issues.”

Drawing a parallel between Chennai and Bengaluru, which is often perceived as the “default destination” for those looking for financing or innovation or process change, he highlighted the availability of a large Tamil workforce.

“Of the hundreds of thousands of employees working in OMR IT corridor, and of the 200,000 people working in what we call Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in this area, you'll find somewhere between 85 and 90 per cent are local people. They've gone to school, they've studied, they've been born, raised in TN. That's not true of any other big tech hub in India,” he said, reeling city names like Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi.

To reinforce this point, the minister adds “during COVID we came to realise about 20 per cent of 25 per cent of Bengaluru’s tech talent is actually Tamil. We are creating human capital, we're not creating opportunity fast enough. So basically, exporting talent to many other parts of the world and the country, some by choice, some by necessity as we're not creating jobs fast enough. That's the reality.”

High retention rates relative to the tech industry and extremely low attrition, apart from reasonable wage escalation and cost of living made Chennai extremely competitive. These were the reasons for drawing a large number of employers from diverse sectors such as banking, communications, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector logistics. “We have almost all the major global corporates with big presence in Chennai or in other parts of TN,” he said.

Another thing distinguishing TN is 50 per cent of its population live in major urban areas with many cities of a million plus. “Most other states don't have that kind of a framework,” the minister said, pointing to Bengaluru and Mysore in Karnataka and Telangana, where 75 per cent of the GDP contribution probably happens in Hyderabad.

But, TN’s advantage is it is cooperative, a heavily industrialised state and a thriving centre. Also, the growth is dispersed across the state to ‘cities’ like Coimbatore, Salem, Tiruchy and Madurai. Therefore, a much more integrated, connected and multi-site state, he sought to point out.