The Indian IT & ITES industry continues to grow at a blistering pace. The availability of an abundant, high-quality and cost-effective pool of skilled knowledge workers is India's main advantage in the global IT and ITES-BPO industry.

But how many people are employed by the IT industry in the country? Who are the biggest IT employers? What is the average age of a software professional? These are questions that everyone is eager to get an answer to.

rediff.com presents a primer on the IT industry and the employment it generates in the country.

How many people does the Indian IT & ITES industry employ?

More than a million people, according to the latest survey by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). The landmark figure was crossed in the fiscal year 2004-05.

What is the break up of more than one million IT professionals?

The Indian IT software and services employee base has grown at a cumulative annual growth rate of 23.6%, from 242,000 in fiscal year 2001-02 to 697,000 in fiscal year 2004-05.

The ITES-BPO employee base has grown at a CAGR of 52.6%, from 42,000 in 2001-02 to 348,000 in 2004-05. Indirect employment attributed to IT-ITES was 2.5 million in 2004-05.

Who is the biggest IT employer in India?

Wipro [Get Quote].

How many people does Wipro employ?

Wipro employs 41,857 people in the country. According to the figure supplied by Wipro to rediff.com, the strength of Wipro Technologies and Wipro BPO combined as of April 2005 stands at 41,857 employees.

"As you see Wipro has grown considerably over the years in becoming a truly global corporation. Wipro has grown by over 40 per cent in employee strength making it one of the largest recruiters in Indian IT service organisations," a Wipro spokesperson told rediff.com.

Which are India's 10 biggest employers in IT?

Which are the three largest multinational IT employers in India?

How many people do major companies, like Infosys [Get Quote] for instance, recruit every year?

According to an Infosys spokesperson, recruitment process in Infosys is aligned to its business requirements and hence the number of employees recruited in any given year is a factor of multiple such parameters. "In FY 04-05, Infosys recruited 11,597 employees," the spokesperson told rediff.com.

What has been the year-wise figure of the last five years' recruitment at Infosys?

Infosys recruited 11,597 employees in FY 05, 10,077 in FY 04, 5,509 in FY 03, 1,548 in FY 02 and 5,303 in FY 01.

What is the average salary of a software engineer/IT professional at Infosys in India?

At Infosys, a fresh graduate who joins as a software engineer is offered an average salary of approximately Rs 18,000 per month.

Who are the most sought after IT professionals in India?

Software analysts, domain specialists, information security experts, integration specialists, database administrators, network specialists and communication engineers, software programmers, designing and architecture experts and data warehousing and semiconductor design specialists.

What is the average age of a software professional in India?

The overall median age of the software professionals is about 27.5 years

What are their qualifications?

• About 81 per cent of all software professionals have a graduate degree or above.
• Almost 13 per cent have qualification like M Tech, MBA, CA, or ICWA.
• One-third -- 67 per cent -- are B Tech, BE or MCAs.
• And 20 per cent are diploma-holders or graduates.

What is the men-women ratio of employed IT professionals?

76 per cent of software professionals in software companies are men, whereas 24 per cent are women. However, Nasscom says this ratio is likely to be 65:35 (men:women) by the year 2007. This ratio is reversed in the ITES-BPO sector where the ratio of men to women is 31:69.

How are the IT professionals selected?

Almost 44 per cent of the companies source their campus recruits from engineering institutes only, though in all, 78 per cent companies visit engineering campuses. About 17 per cent of the companies visit only management school campuses, although as a total, 44 per cent of the data sample, recruit from these institutes.

Six per cent of the organisations in the sample visit only graduate schools, although as a total, 17 per cent of the data sample, recruit from these institutes.

Is there any segment of IT sectors that does not get enough skilled professionals in India?

Emerging growth segments that require relevantly skilled professionals include product data management, content management, enterprise application integration, data warehousing, contingency planning and disaster recovery, e-supply chain management (eSCM), wireless applications, straight through processing (STP), knowledge management, business intelligence, sales force automation (SFA), e-Learning, ePharma, bioinformatics and nanotechnology.

Additional inputs: Sanjay Krishnan