Some businesses continue
to flourish despite slowdown
By James Jose
New
Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) Not all businesses have been affected
by the economic downturn. While the banking and financial
sectors are looking to the government for bailout packages,
there are some sectors - healthcare, clinical research, private
security and gaming - that remain unscathed by the global
meltdown.
"Healthcare
is different from other sectors as it is not affected by business
cycles. The medical needs of a population can't have slumps,"
said Daljit Singh, president, strategy and organisational
development, at Fortis Healthcare. "How can one defer
heart treatment?" he asked.
With
30 million people suffering from cardiovascular diseases,
25 million with type-2 diabetes and 10 million with psychiatric
disorders, Indians surely cannot do without quality healthcare.
A
report by international consultancy KPMG on the private healthcare
industry said it had been growing at a remarkable rate of
37 percent since 2001-02 and currently stood at Rs.51.25 billion
(Rs.5,125 crore) this fiscal.
According
to management consultancy firm Technopak Advisors, the Indian
healthcare industry will grow to $75 billion by 2012 from
the current $35 billion.
Another
industry that is bucking the downward trend is clinical research,
which is slated to touch Rs.50 billion by 2010.
Said
R.S. Nadig, president (operations) of the Mumbai-based Clinical
Research Education and Management Academy: "A lot of
clinical research that happens in India is outsourced from
the US because it is 50 percent cheaper to do it in India.
Moreover, India specialises in advanced stages of clinical
research and companies will not stop them in between."
Employment
opportunities in this sector are on the rise with the country
facing a dearth of qualified professionals. "We have
around 10,000 professionals in the industry, but we need around
40,000 more," Nadig told IANS.
Similarly,
the private security business is also full of new opportunities,
officials said.
Said
Rupal Sinha, regional managing director of G4S Security Systems
India: "Board rooms across industries now view security
as an asset rather than treating it as an expense or liability.
G4S has recruited 43,000 people this year and the industry
on the whole is expected to generate one million jobs every
year."
Gaming
has also defied the downward trend and is set to touch $200
million by 2011, software industry body National Association
of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said.
The
industry will grow to $40 billion globally by 2011, Nasscom
said in a report.
"Of
all industries, gaming is definitely recession proof. We at
Zapak itself are expanding our business. We recently launched
www.zapakworld.com - a global casual gaming website,"
said Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer of software gaming
firm Zapak Digital Entertainment.
"Gaming
is a fairly inexpensive form of entertainment with a high
degree of reusability. All one needs is a computer and an
internet connection. With about 2.7 million broadband subscribers
and 3.96 million households having a computer, a lot of young
people are increasingly logging on to the virtual world of
gaming", Sharma added.
Headhunters
agree that some industries prove more resilient than others
during economic downturns.
According
to Absolute HR Services chief executive Kunal Banerjee, "sectors
like healthcare and private security will remain insulated
to a great extent because one cannot do without them. In addition,
staffing agencies working for such sectors would also do well."
He
added that jobs in the government sector were stable as layoffs
rarely took place and work pressure was relatively low. "People
have started looking at the civil services with renewed gusto
and I think we might have a record number of applicants for
the UPSC examinations," Banerjee told IANS.
Indo-Asian
News Service
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