With an expected growth of 8 percent to $167 million, the Indian IT industry is looking to hire over 1 lakh people in 2018, according to a tweet by Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

On the social media platform Twitter, the minister on meeting NASSCOM president Debjani Ghosh said, "She informed me that Indian IT industry is set to grow at 8% to $167 Billion in 2018 offering direct jobs to 3.97 million people, which is an addition of 105,000 employees over 2017."

Software services industry body NASSCOM, expects the exports to grow to $137 billion in 2018-19 from $126 billion in 2017-18. As the Indian IT industry is hoping to add one lakh jobs in 2018-19, the overall IT-BPO industry size would be adding $14-16 billion.

In another event, Debjani Ghosh and UK's Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, Matt Hancock, launched the 4th edition of the India-UK TECH Rocketship Awards.

These awards are meant to help Indian start-ups in emerging technology fields like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cyber security, fintech, med-tech and IoT (Internet of Things) to get access to funding and a platform to go global via the United Kingdom.

The awardees will win a week-long sponsored trip to the UK where they are exposed to prospective business partners, investors, and incubators at the London Tech Week 2019. This year's winners will travel to the event next year, while those who won last year will be going this year.