Narayan AmmachchiThe technology outsourcing industry in Ukraine is staring at a grim prospect of losing its foreign clients, as its workers struggle to carry on with their job amid widespread power and internet outages in the war-torn country.
The Russian bombing of its power plants has caused electricity outages, with telecom carriers scrambling to restore internet services.
Ukraine has a large pool of IT talent, although technology services account for just 4% of the country’s economy. One in five fortune 500 companies use Ukrainian IT services, according to Bloomberg.
Learning science and technology has long been a tradition in Ukraine even when the country was part of the Soviet Union.
Thanks largely to its strong talent pool, the country’s IT services industry has been seeing its revenue soaring in the past few years. Ukraine’s IT exports jumped by a staggering 36% to US$6.8 billion in 2021, reported The Wall Street Journal, citing data from IT Ukraine Association, a trade group.
With the war dealing a severe blow to the country’s vital infrastructure, many foreign IT companies are reportedly relocating their employees to safer locations.
Some companies are moving their employees to remote areas within Ukraine, while a few others are lifting them to nearby countries such as Turkey.
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