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Only 25 per cent of people with disability (PwD) have been employed across various sectors, finds a report by market intelligence firm UnearthInsight, highlighting the untapped potential of the PwD workforce in India.

The report "Unused Potential of India's People with Disability (PwD) Workforce" showed India has almost 3 crore PwD population of which around 1.3 crore is employable PwD talent (above 21 and less than 60 years). But only 34 lakh PwD talent is currently employed across the organised, unorganised sector, government-led schemes and self-employed sectors.

Technology and retail are leading the way in skilling and creating employment opportunities for the PwD talent pool. Organised retail sector employs over 13,000 PwD professionals whereas more than 8,000 PwD professionals are employed by the technology sector (IT services, Product/GCC). Banking and Financial services sector is an emerging employer for PwD talent.

While the SBI is the largest employer of PwD in the back-office and front-office jobs, TCS and Accenture are the larger employers in the IT services sector, and SAP and Microsoft lead the high skilled tech PwD talent in software product industries.

The country has a potential worker bandwidth of 3,40,000 non-tech graduates like BA/Bcom, polytechnic and diploma who could be skilled and brought into the mainstream services sector and knowledge industry to push per capita income.

Another 17,000 PwD students graduate in engineering/computer science and aligned streams, out of which the IT services sector employs around 8,000 PwD employees whereas software product has around 5,500 and alternate tech has around 3,500 PwD talent.

"Contemporary business strategy towards the expansion of the talent pool is focused on realising the ideals of diversity and inclusion at the workplaces. It is a well-established fact that the PwD workforce is more resilient and committed, today firms are more interested in investing and engaging in creating a skilled labour force which comes from diversified backgrounds and is not restricted to Tier-I cities," UnearthInsight founder and CEO Gaurav Vasu said in a statement.

"However, there is a long way to go, as India is sitting on a huge PwD talent pool that can play an important role. With the right policy and strategy shift, there is a real chance that we work towards raising employability rates among the PwD population," he added.