The Chinese and others have a lead in sending tech and other talent to work at Japanese heavyweight innovators. India has a massive opportunity here. Japan needs Indian talent, and Indian tech whizkids can power cutting-edge Japanese technology.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Japan’s industrial sector is diverse and produces a wide variety of goods, from steel and paper technology.
The nation is a global leader in electronics, agriculture, international trade biotechnology, robotics and renewable energy. Japanese businesses are under pressure to digitize their business and goods in each of these markets by integrating cutting-edge technologies like AI, Big Data, in order to preserve and boost competitiveness.
Skilled Labour Shortage in Japan
Japan experienced a labour shortage in certain industries during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was further impacted by a steep drop in the number of international students and workers as a result of pandemic measures, highlighting Japan's reliance on foreign labour.
Japan is on the verge of revolutionising its manufacturing approach by adapting and adopting innovation and emerging technologies. According to the 2018 Percentage of STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics), China and India have a large percentage while Japan only accounts for 1.6 per cent of the worldwide market. India has 20.7 per cent while China has 37.3 per cent. Indians are prioritized because they can speak English better than those in China.
Japan’s information technology (IT) sector is experiencing a severe labour shortage. In 2017, there was a deficit of 450,000 people. So Japan is partnering with countries all over the world.
Why India Is Best-Placed Fill The Gap
India's IT sector has caught Japan's attention in particular. Indian technologists are in high demand in Japan where there is a growing need for engineering talent and Japanese companies are thus hiring Indian techies. Over a million students graduate each year from science and technology undergraduate programmes in India. In the future, it is hoped that more Japanese businesses will begin hiring Indian talent.
There are many talented Indian techies in the world, including the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. Many CEOs of companies like Tomato, Flipkart, and Ola are all Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduates. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is the country's most prestigious technological national university.
In Japan, a programme called PIITS (Project Indian Institutes of Technology) has been developed to invite students from IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) to intern in Japanese firms and companies.
Particularly in the field of engineers, India has a sizable pool of highly skilled experts. Strong communication abilities and a capacity for cultural adaptation are common among highly qualified Indian professionals, which increases their chances of success in Japanese businesses.
Some Japanese businesses listed the benefits of having Indian employees, including their technical expertise, communication skills, devotion to the company, commitment to their jobs, willingness to take on challenges without fear of failure, and a number of other qualities. The information technology sector in Japan is seeing a rise of Indian system engineers. By the end of 2008, there were nearly 22,000 Indians living in Japan, which is an increase from ten years prior.
According to Shigeki Maeda, Executive Vice President of the Japan External Trade Organization, "Currently there are around 920,000 IT professionals in the country and there is an immediate demand for more than 200,000 IT professionals from India, which is likely to further swell to 800,000 professionals by 2030,"
Language Barriers Are Coming Down
At a India-Japan dialogue series organised by the New Delhi-based think-tank India Foundation, Naotaka Nishiyama, co-founder of Tech Japan, an organisation that links Japanese companies with Indian tech professionals, recently said, “The reason why we are hiring from India, number one reason is many talents in the tech field, the second one is the entrepreneurial mindset, the next one is the English ability, if we ask desire for Japanese ability so 62 per cent Japanese company say that Japanese are not required…”
Indian IT specialists have been popular with Japanese companies like Mercari. Indian engineers make up the greatest percentage of the non-Japanese engineering skill base in Mercari's Tokyo branch, which has more than 50 per cent non-Japanese staff. For the purpose of hiring non-Japanese engineers, Mercari has built connections with top colleges and universities in India since 2017.
The business has invested in its human resources section and hired English-speaking professionals to speed up its efforts to hire the Indian nationals. Mercari now concentrates on introducing intercultural viewpoints into its management teams as non-Japanese engineers now make up the bulk of its engineering organisation.
We can see how valuable Indian IT professionals are to Japan. There is still a long way to go before Indian professionals can compete on a global scale, despite the fact that their numbers have begun to rise quickly. Japan will still have to compete with American and other companies as their brand and salaries attract the Indian engineers.