120,000 foreigners needed to plug India's skills gap

India faces a massive shortage of workers with European language skills over the next five years which could see the country needing to recruit up to 120,000 foreigners.

The language skills deficit is revealed in a new report by research firm Evalueserve, which calculates that no more than 40,000 Indians will have a European language specialisation other than English.

As demand for offshore services increases from continental European countries, the study claims this will leave a shortage of 120,000 workers who specialise in a non-English European language.

Many of these multilingual professionals will have to be recruited from continental Europe to work in the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) offshore industry, for jobs involving the collection of information, working on non-English documents, voice-based services and transaction processes.

Evalueserve said the ramping up of non-English speaking capability by the Indian offshore firms is an attempt to capture a larger share of the continental European outsourcing market, and reduce the country's high-risk exposure of more than 80 per cent of business coming from the UK and the US economies.

Factors attracting non-English speaking professionals to work in India are good compensation packages and the lifestyle, according to the study.

Marc Vollenweider, CEO of Evalueserve, said in the report: "Exposure to a fast-growing business economy is probably the biggest incentive and reason that young professionals are increasingly taking job offers in the Indian IT and offshoring industry."

The most sought after workers are those with Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish or Russian language skills and business or technical degrees.

Earlier this year silicon.com revealed how some UK companies with offshore operations in India are recruiting gap year students and backpackers to help bridge the culture gap in the call centres between Indian agents and UK customers.

English-speaking language skills could also be in short supply. At an offshore conference in New Delhi back in April, Dan Sandhu, CEO India and head of offshore business at United Utilities' business process outsourcing arm Vertex, warned that only a small percentage of the two million English-speaking graduates per year turned out by Indian universities actually have good enough English to work in customer-facing offshore operations.