India to help Japan fill manpower gap

HYDERABAD: Japan is looking to hire human resources from India to fill the manpower gap in its information technology sector caused due to a fall in the country’s working population, according to Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), a government agency which promotes trade between Japanese firms and other countries. The Japanese government is also looking to collaborate with companies specifically from Hyderabad, JETRO members said at a press conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the agency on Wednesday. “Japan has a shortage (of people) and resources in IT companies and it will be a big help for us. In our country, Hyderabad is not as popular as Bengaluru, but the former has centres established by big (US) companies here. It is a Mecca of the IT industry. We are looking at collaboration with Japanese companies as well,” said Shigeki Maeda, executive vice-president of JETRO.

Apart from the IT industry, Japanese companies mostly have a presence in the manufacturing and automotive sectors in India, Maeda said, adding that JETRO is also looking at Hyderabad’s pharma industry for investments. “The pharma industry is big here and our government is also looking at promoting generic drugs,” said Maeda, who was in Hyderabad along with other JETRO officials for the India-Japan Business Partnership seminar jointly organised by the CII and the government of Telangana. Maeda stated that there are 1,369 Japanese companies present in India as of now, with investments of about $3.69 billion in 4,838 centres. Kazuya Nakajo, chief general director of JETRO in India, said Japan has been outsourcing some of its IT recruitments to countries such as China right since the 1990s, and later countries like Vietnam and the Philippines. “The Indian outsourcing business is losing out due to language barriers, as people from other countries learn Japanese. We are expecting India to not just send programmers but be a co-developer as well,” he added.