The industrial lockdown relaxation by the State government seems to have received a cold response from the Bengaluru Inc., with the key industry stakeholder — IT and ITeS — continuing to mostly work from home.
Nasscom vice-chairman U.B. Pravin Rao earlier said the IT industry was not in a hurry to move work to offices, instead it would only scale up in a slow and phased manner, week after week. Recently, TCS said by 2025, it would have only 25% of its workers on campuses while the rest would work from home. A quick check run across a bunch of domestic and MNC tech firms in the city revealed that the lockdown relaxation has not increased techie footfall on campuses/offices. “We have 10% per cent working from office now. We don’t expect any sudden scale up this month,” said the HR head of a leading tech firm.
However, biotechnology and biopharma sector reported a slight increment of people. Biocon said: “We are ramping up gradually. There was a marginal increase in the number of people who reported at site today in comparison to April 30 last week. We have people working in shifts hence at any given point of time, we have less than 30% employees at work. People who can work from home are continuing to do so.” Meanwhile Small and micro industries body KASSIA said: “As per reliable information,Up to 25% of industries estates at Peenya, Bommasandra, Rajajinagar, Kamakshipalya, Bommasandra, Jigani and the districts of Hubballi, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Belagavi, Kalaburagi etc., have been able to work. Worryingly, however, the labour attendance is very thin around 20% in these places.” said Kassia president, R. Raju.