In the best of times, Phani Missala, dressed in formals, would drive his new wine-red Hyundai Xcent into the sprawling Tech Mahindra (TechM) campus. A techie with over 13 years of experience at companies like Deloitte and Hewlett Packard, life was good for him. He still remembers the days he spent in Sunnyvale (California), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and Bangkok (Thailand) in 2013 and 2014.
However, the wheels of fortune have stopped for Phani who was first put on the bench by TechM in May 2017 and later asked to leave without as much as citing a reason.
Phani continues to drive his Hyundai Xcent, albeit as a cabbie for a BPO between 4.30am and 1pm and then a part-time Uber driver till 7.30pm. The 15 gruelling hours of work notwithstanding, he manages to net just about Rs 30,000 a month – not enough to manoeuvre life’s challenges. Apart from feeding his family, he also has the burden of a home loan, a car loan and school fee of his two children. “I am driving the cab to keep the family wheel going,” 42-year-old Phani says. His last pay cheque was for Rs 1 lakh.
The formal dress has given way to jeans but the rugged appearance does not hide his real moorings. When passengers engage him in a friendly chat, they get intrigued why he took to the wheel. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” he laughs, confessing it isn’t “uber cool to drive a cab”. “But there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he adds. Phani is not alone. Several of his colleagues were handed out the dreaded ‘pink slip’, though he isn’t sure how many like him took to the wheel.
And while Phani has been “looking out for jobs”, hiring in the IT sector has remained muted in the last few years hit by low technology spending and higher automation.
Industry body Nasscom, in its last forecast, pegged the growth of IT/BPO sector at 7.9% for the current fiscal, while predicting 30%-50% drop in hiring. The changing technology environment meant up skilling with Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, big data analytics and machine learning being the new age technologies driving the sector.
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