With half of its population under 25 and the unemployment rate at four-decade high, India faces an uncertain future. The question on young people’s minds: what kinds of jobs will we have? Quartz asked leaders across India’s biggest industries about that one job in their company or field that will be the most crucial in the coming decades.
From physical banking to providing contactless solutions such as digital wallets, the Indian financial services sector has undergone a sea change in recent times. The policy framework, too, has evolved to accommodate more payments banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), and small finance banks. The government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) now fulfills more digital payments in India than cards and net banking. With growth in digital banking, roles that involve mitigating risk, managing cyber security, and ensuring privacy will gain prominence. Many banks have already started appointing chief risk officers.
Kunal Shah, the founder and CEO of credit card payment app CRED, told Quartz:
The most critical need for talent is not in one specific role, but traits that apply across functions. The people who can make an outsized difference bring a combination of what is conventionally known as left-brained and right-brained thinking. They understand human behavior and motivations, empathize with users, and imagine products and experiences that address challenges from the ground up. The same people also reason effectively, create logical workflows, and execute at scale. This combination of creativity and reason is the single most differentiated attribute for talent, and one by which we evaluate every individual. Using CRED is delightful because of this empathetic approach to design that our team members conceive of and deliver, from the head of design who is a full-time musician to a colleague who is a poet.