India has an overall People with Disability (PwD) talent of 30 million, around 50 per cent of which is employable, but, currently, only 25 per cent (around 3.4 million) is employed across sectors, according to a new report by UnearthInsight, a metrics benchmarking and market intelligence firm. 

People with Disabilities face more severe health and infrastructural challenges and yet data shows their capabilities of resilience, which can help them contribute to India’s growing need of skilled labour, according to the report titled “Unused Potential of India’s People with Disability (PwD) Workforce”. quoted by Techglocal. 

“It is a well-established fact that PwD workforce is more resilient and committed, today firms are more interested at investing and engaging in creating a skilled labor force which comes from diversifies background and is not restricted to tier 1 cities,” said Gaurav Vasu, Founder and CEO, UnearthInsight.

“However, there is a long way to go, as India is sitting on a huge PwD talent pool that can play an important role. With the right policy and strategy shift, there is a real chance that we work towards raising employability rates among the PwD population,” he said in a statement.

Technology and retail are leading the way in skilling and creating employment opportunities for PwD talent pool. 

Organised retail sector employs over 13,000+ PwD professionals whereas 8,000+ PwD professionals are employed by technology (IT services, Product/GCC) sector.

Banking & Financial Services Sector is an emerging employer for PwD talent wherein SBI is the largest employer of PwD in the back-office and front-office jobs, the report said.

“The country has a potential worker bandwidth of 3,40,000 non-tech graduates like BA/Bcom, Polytechnic and Diploma who could be skilled and brought into mainstream services sector and knowledge industry to push per capita income,” the report added.

Another 17,000 PwD students who graduate in Engineering/computer science and aligned streams, out of which the IT services sector employs around 8,000 PwD employees whereas Software product has around 5,500 and the Alternate Tech Talent has around 3,500 PwD talent. 

TCS and Accenture are larger employers of PwD talent in India’s IT services sector while SAP and Microsoft lead the high skilled tech PwD talent in Software Product industries in India, according to the report. (SAM)