India’s ambitious journey to become a top player in the emerging electric vehicle market will be accompanied by 5 million new direct job opportunities, as per a report by talent solutions provider Careernet. The burgeoning market has already witnessed a 2,218 per cent surge in sales in the past three years.
EV jobs saw a compound annual growth rate of 110 per cent between 2020 and 2022. Last calendar year clocked 0.4 million EV jobs, 28 per cent of which were in Bengaluru. The city is expected to become a hub for both manufacturing and innovation in the sector as it goes through a technology intensive transformation, according to Careernet Chief Business Officer Neelabh Shukla.
“Bengluru is emerging as a strong centre for the EV sector where a vehicle manufacturing market didn’t exist traditionally, largely due to the innovation that is happening in the city. There would be a fair bit of manufacturing activity that would happen around the Bengaluru region as well,” he told DH.
The top jobs in demand in FY22 (20 per cent) were for designing battery management systems, which form an integral part of EVs. A similar magnitude of demand was seen for support roles, many of which would shift from the traditional vehicle market. Overall, key domain skills in demand revolve around engineering and R&D (55 per cent), where the most amount of upskilling would also be required.
However, while the acquisition of these skills would be self-driven by individuals, equipping those in support roles to transition into the electric vehicle industry would be undertaken by manufacturers and service providers, as per Shukla. And for jobs requiring special skills, expats are already showing interest to come to India for short-term assignments, he added.
The spike in job demand will also come with significant pay hikes, as those involved in conceptualization, designing and building the core technologies for these vehicles and accompanying infrastructure would be at par with traditional high-tech jobs. At the same time, the formalisation of the economy would also lead to higher pay cheques for those in support roles and policy outreach would allow their earning potential to scale up, as per Shukla.