AI Squeezes Tech Grads at India’s Banking Hubs

AI is reshaping labor markets worldwide. [music] But few countries have as much at stake as India. Long considered a nation of coders. Its IT services sector employs [music] 6 million people and accounts for nearly 8% of the economy. [music] Around 2.4 million work in global capability centers or GCC's in-house hubs for multinational companies. [music] Numero analysts call India ground zero for assessing AI's impact on jobs. Though the disruption to outsourcing [music] firms seems more than on the GCC's as AI takes over a bulk of the entry-level work has vanished, [music] say experts. Banks are automating work like checking loan documents, [music] reconciling accounts, invoicing, and writing basic code. That work once gave graduates [music] an entry into the corporate world. GCC's are expanding but hiring differently. Entry-level recruitment is slowing while companies focus on [music] reskilling and experienced workers who can deploy AI understand the business behind it and know when human judgment [music] is needed. At Cityroup, net hiring for its India GCC operations fell to about 2,000 so [music] far this year from roughly 4,000 last year. There is little evidence yet on massive job losses at GCC's, [music] but AI is making the first rung of India's tech career ladder harder to reach.