Why there is tremendous growth that is evidently in the offing for innocent EV industry in India, there is going to be a huge HR challenge as well.
There are various media reports that are confirming several new entrants in the the EV market in India. Amongst these new entrance are several top notch companies from Europe and Southeast Asia. Most of these organizations will look to hire the best talent that is available in the market. This may lead to poaching from the existing players, who may have experienced resources that are well versed with the Indian EV landscape. As confirmed by several staffing companies, the demand for new hires, has already jumped by 100%.
There will be severe pressure within the organizations to up skill and train other existing resources or recruit fresh talent that may need hand holding and training. This can also present huge business opportunity for existing companies that to training and skill building. This situation is akin to that in the Solar industry about 7 years ago. With the the sudden search and requirements and scale up by several players and the race to build bigger solar plants from the magnitude of a few MWs, to a few hundred MWs, there was severe shortage for talent. The industry overcame this through to various training programs and e learning modules that helped generate awareness about the best practices within the industry and helped in much needed training inputs.
Whether it is, Ashok Leyland or Mercedes or Tata Motors, all players have embarked on creating some form of training module and their HR departments are scrambling for or experienced staff either for assembly / manufacturing operations or selling or after sales. All of these players have Grand plans and aggressive sales ramp up and their business plans aim for exponential growth. For example Tata Motors expects to notch up sales volume of 100000 electric vehicles by financial year 2024.
Since a lot of technology is also going to be imported and the European and US markets are more mature as far as new launches are concerned, the possibility that a lot of expats may also be hired cannot be ruled out.
There are various policy measures that the government is rolling out to make sure that the ingredients that can make up a vibrant EV ecosystem is present that can attract global EV players. It may be worthwhile for them to consider an active people strategy for attracting the best talent which means that our cities and the infrastructure within the cities also needs to be upgraded and is world class.