Hiring in FY’17 to be lower: NASSCOM

New Delhi, July 24 : IT body NASSCOM in its report has said that fresh hiring in the current financial year may be lower in comparison to 2016, as the IT companies are facing pressure on margins besides focusing on automation of jobs. "Hiring activity in the year before last was 2.20 lakh. Last year, (FY 2015-16) there were about two lakh additions. This financial year, we are expecting it to be on the lower side of that," said NASSCOM President, R Chandrashekhar. Explaining about the decrease in hiring activity, he said fresh hiring is either static or gently declining. "It is not as if overall hiring is going down. It is not going to be in the same pace as it was," he added. Chandrashekhar attributed that the companies' focus is on automation and pressure on margins for the decrease in hiring activities. "They (IT companies) are adopting higher productivity by reducing the strength and focusing on automation. For a country like India, automation works differently as cost effectiveness on automation is different because our economic levels are different," he said. While certain jobs within the industry may be automated, those which are off-shored are actually coming in to India, he said. However, he mentioned about the loss of jobs because of automation within India. "In short, for the next two years, we are still quite optimistic. Our fundamentals are stronger than others (countries)," Chandrashekhar added.