Professionals in the information technology (IT) sector are all set to get double-digit increments this year, reported The Economic Times.

According to the report, industry association Nasscom and compensation experts have said that IT professionals can look forward to higher increments and better opportunities than last year, mainly due to the growing demand in emerging segments such as machine learning and robotics.

“This year would see increments of 8-10 percent across the IT industry, but the talent in niche technologies may get almost double the increments of an average performer,” Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice president, Nasscom was quoted as saying in the report. This, according to the report, is a big leap in comparison to last year’s figures. According to Nasscom, last year, the average salary hike in the IT industry was around 6 to 8 percent.

“The IT industry is demonstrating a positive outlook this year with a salary increase of 0.6 percent compared to last year. The business outlook exhibits an upswing driven by a greater uptake of solutions focused on automation, analytics, deep domain expertise and cloud deployment,” said Anirban Gupta, senior consultant at Aon India Consulting that estimated that average hikes for the IT sector would be around 9.8 percent.