India needs 28.4mn skilled workforce in logistics segment by 2020

According to a report by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), India will need around 28.4 million workers in India's booming transportation, logistics, warehousing and packaging sector.

The sector, which currently employs over 16.74 million employees, will employ more than 28.4 million employees by 2022. According to the report, this sector will have one of the highest incremental human resource requirement of 11.7 million from 2013-2022, across 24 sectors that have been mapped for assessing incremental human resource requirement in the country.

NSDC stated that rising investment, rapidly evolving regulatory policies, mega infrastructure projects and several other developments in recent times have driven the Indian logistics market, simultaneously, also overcoming infrastructure-related constraints and logistics-centric inefficiency.

The report further states that key growth drivers are the logistics activities, which are currently outsourced and are growing rapidly at a rate of 52%. Growth is due to a thrust on marquee projects - dedicated freight corridors, DMIC, JNPT container terminal, and inland waterways. There's also rapid growth in organised retail, e-commerce, QSR, containerisation, etc.
FMCG is expected to grow at over 12 % CAGR during 2010-2020. Also, increasing income levels among consumers makes product affordable and hence, provides scope for innovative packaging to attract consumers to purchase the product. Food and beverage, which contributes 85% of total packaging user segments, is one of the biggest driving force.

Dilip Chenoy, MD and CEO, NSDC said: "The biggest challenge for the sector is to attract talent. The sector clearly sees poor working conditions and low pay scales in comparison to other career options because of poor or non-existent manpower policies. The industry is expected to give a push to Indian economy with emergence of e-commerce, organised retail & Quick Service Restaurants (QSR)."

"With more organised approach towards transport and logistics activities due to emergence of global third-party logistics (3PL) players, the demand for trained employees with specific skill sets is expected to further increase," he further added.

As per National Sample Survey (NSS) 68th round survey, the districts with maximum employment in the transportation and logistics sector are Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Delhi and Ahmedabad. The high growth clusters as identified by NSDC incremental human resource requirement studies are Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Bangalore, Surat and Indore.