The threat of Industrial Revolution 4.0 in Service Sector

The greatest threat of automation is on lower end jobs. Such jobs form the bulk of employment and replacing them with technologies would lead to mass unemployment.

Lakshmi is a humanoid robot launched in Kumbakonam based city bank. ICICI bank has also introduced Software Robotics to power banking operations. Though they are making the system customer and bank friendly , impact on other sections of society should also be considered.

The growth of BPOs and call centres have been a boon for many low skilled and less educated people. The Automation technologies like Artificial Intelligence , humanoid robots etc would win the competition against their human counterparts. Thus , BPOs and call centres jobs would completely be eradicated. 

The number of digital startups are constantly increasing. The financial condition of most of these startups are weak. World Bank report suggests that India would lose 50% of its IT sector jobs due to automation. This job loss can't be tackled with the emerging startups because of their poor financial condition and viability of success.

Indian service sector be it education , health , banking etc has mostly non-customer facing roles with significant back-processing and IT roles. Thus , they are vulnerable to the threat of automation. The focus of the government is also virtually promoting automation like demonetization , DIgital india Programme etc.

As far as banking sector is concerned , many highly sophisticated functions like financial consulting and loan approvals would be done through automation in coming future. They would kill more jobs than they would create.

The implications on skill development and unemployment would be considered in next article. Any queries , comments , suggestions and feedback are most welcome. 

For background, refer this article.