The Indian IT industry is battling an all-time high period of attrition that market observers say is averaging around 25 per cent. The pandemic has led to an unprecedented demand for software talent which has in turn resulted in record attrition levels.

The lack of quality talent is more acute in the software development space where demand is fast outstripping supply. This is corroborated by a recent report by cloud infrastructure provider DigitalOcean, which states that 42 per cent of software developers who haven’t switched jobs during the pandemic are considering quitting this year. The report also notes that over a quarter of developers who have been in the workforce for over one year have taken a new job in the past year.

According to a report by Nasscom-Zinnov, India is projected to face a shortage of 14-19 lakh technology professionals by 2026. The tech workforce stood at 47 lakh employees in 2021, but the country needed 52 lakh tech professionals. This translates to a 21.1 per cent technology talent gap.

By 2026, as per the report, India is expected to have 75-78 lakh tech professionals, but the requirement may be 93-96 lakh. Another report, commissioned by AWS, predicts that India would need nine times as many digitally skilled workers by 2025.

The aforementioned issues can be resolved effectively with low-code platforms. Some of the biggest benefits of these are:

Low-code platforms empower skilled developers to work more efficiently, so they can focus on more complex, less mundane aspects of programming. This way, companies of any size are able to maximise their existing resources.

They help enterprises pivot to new digital initiatives caused by abrupt market changes and new consumer and customer needs. For example, you can deliver cloud applications that integrate with some legacy systems to meet the changing needs of customers.

The pace of development will improve as enterprises have access to hundreds of pre-built UI patterns, samples and screen templates with predefined layouts, widgets, components, styles and logic. These can be added to the applications using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) type of editor.

They can help citizen developers or business domain experts develop professional apps using features such as drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built user interfaces, and models for business processes, logic, and data models.

The Covid-19 pandemic has meant that every company now is a digital company or uses digital technologies in some way or the other. Given the pace of digital initiatives, low-code platforms can play a pivotal role in addressing India’s most vexing issue — the software skills gap.

For example, if a government department wants to develop an app in an emergency situation (such as the Aarogya Setu App for tracking Covid-19 infections), then it cannot be done in the traditional way. Additionally, business leaders have to acknowledge that technology is fluid, and every application has to morph and transition to meet the needs of a dynamic era. A low-code platform can address this need and enable developers to change an app or adjust to new technology as fast as it was developed.

High performance low-code platforms also ensure that all applications are built by following best practices of coding. Leading low-code platforms provide services and security checks to ensure scalability, governance, protection from threats, and compliance. From a quality perspective, this helps in ensuring that all applications are built by following best practices of software development.

Additionally, many low-code platforms also offer AI capabilities to find and solve issues early, eliminate design errors and duplication of effort and identify anything that needs to be corrected or optimised. This way, developers can evolve apps every bit as quickly as the business changes and new technologies are introduced.

The writer is Regional Vice President, OutSystems India

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