Data Insight May 24, 2024

India Outperforms on Digital Skills. Here’s How to Tap into the Talent Pool

Hiring digital talent into your supply chain? Look to India – software engineering is 2.7x more likely to be mentioned in job posts there compared to the rest of the world, and AI/ML skills are mentioned 3.2x more often, too. 

Greta O'Marah Avatar
Greta O'Marah
Talent

Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Software engineering is a required skill in 2.7x more supply chain job posts in India vs the global average.

  2. 2

    Lowe’s, Walmart, Maersk, and Target are leading the pack on investing in tech talent from India, seeking out digital skills in 86%, 75%, 72%, and 71% of supply chain job listings in the country, respectively.

In 2020, India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development warned that scientific and technological advances could see many unskilled jobs “taken over” by machines, while a skilled workforce – “particularly involving mathematics, computer science, and data science, in conjunction with multidisciplinary abilities across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities” – would be in high demand. 

This understanding inspired that year’s National Education Policy, which proposed that students be offered coding courses as early as Grade 6. But when it comes to digital skills, the country is already leading the pack. 

In supply chain recruitment, India over-indexes on some of the most in-demand digital skills. For example, software engineering is 2.7x more likely to be mentioned in Indian job posts, compared to the global average, and AI/ML skills are mentioned 3.2x more.  

Bar chart showing share of supply chain job posts mentioning digital skills comparing India and rest of the world. 
Source: Zero100 analysis of LinkedIn data.

Lowe’s, Walmart, Maersk, and Target are leading the pack on hiring digital talent in India, seeking out digital skills in 86%, 75%, 72%, and 71% of supply chain job listings in the country, respectively.  

More broadly, our research shows companies tend to require a higher level of technical proficiency of applicants in India. Supply chain job descriptions in India are more than twice as likely to require analytics skills than any other geography and at least four times as likely to require skills in AI/ML or software engineering.  

And job posts in India are aimed at applicants across levels of seniority. When it comes to logistics roles, for example, Walmart’s 93 active job posts in India include 37 for grad interns (requiring no experience), 26 for managers, four for product managers, and one for a principal product manager.

Seeking out tech talent for your own organization? India might have just the digital skills you’re looking for at all levels of seniority, particularly when it comes to analytics, software engineering, and, increasingly, AI/ML skills.  

When structuring your team, use a hub-and-spoke model with a dotted-line connection to HQ. Link the team in India to a central leader or a specific analytics organization to ensure strong governance and identify clear career paths for talent to grow. 

To see a different data cut or to dig deeper into this topic, reach out to our Head of Research Analytics, Cody Stack, at Cody.Stack@zero100.com

Methodology   

Zero100’s proprietary data and analytics are a combined effort between our data scientists and research analysts. We provide data-first insights matched with our own research-backed points of view and bring this analysis to life via real-world case examples being led by supply chain practitioners today.    

For this study, we looked at 595k supply chain LinkedIn job posts from 175 B2B and B2C companies. Our analysis categorizes listings based on mentions of specific digital skills within job titles and descriptions.