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Reverse swing in
outsourcing
By Priyanka
Bhardwaj
NEW
DELHI - Over the past year, thousands of top-
and middle-level executives from the United States
and the United Kingdom have left their countries to explore
job opportunities in India's Wipro, Infosys,
Satyam and Tata Consultancy Services, to name
a few. This is apart from regular middle- and top-level
management positions in multinational companies
such as IBM and General Electric that have
set up huge operations in India. It is estimated
that the number of foreigners working in India in
the software and outsourcing industries is
mounting rapidly. The Foreign Registrar Office in
New Delhi puts it at 50,000, and counting.
"Many foreign nationals are looking at
mid- and senior-level positions in India. Every
week, we get at least one well-qualified foreigner
looking for a job here," said Kris Lakshmikanth,
founder, chief executive officer and managing
director of executive recruiting firm Head
Hunters (India). "As several IT [information
technology] product firms are setting up shop in
India, experienced professionals from the US are
on the lookout for jobs here. The trend is most
visible in top-tier recruitment firms."
Anil Mahajan, executive director of
Talent Hunt Private Ltd, said, "Earlier, only call-center
jobs were being outsourced to India. But now, as
companies start to ship high-end research and
senior managerial jobs as well to India, foreign
workers see a huge opportunity for themselves
here. Till recently, we were getting regular job
queries from expatriate Indians wanting to move
back to India. We were taken by surprise when
overseas professionals from countries as far as
the US, UK and South Africa also started calling
us up to enquire about job opportunities here.
This has now become a trend."
Estimates suggest that 200,000-400,000 jobs have moved
from the US since the outsourcing trend began in
the 1990s, which is still a fraction of the 138
million jobs there. The Information Technology
Association of America (ITAA) says only about 2%
of the country's 10 million computer-related jobs
have been sent abroad; 12% of IT companies have
"outsourced" work, compared with 3% of non-IT firms.
The most high-end projection has been made by
Forrester Research - a loss of 3.3 million jobs by
2015, including 1.7 million back-office jobs and
473,000 IT jobs.
Experts say that
foreign manpower, apart from the pressure of job
losses, are seeking out India for the opportunities
on offer and as an attractive destination. This
is because many leading global technology firms
have started to move high-profile and highly
skilled jobs to India, apart from the many low-end
call-center jobs that have already shifted base to the
country.
In the past, Indian
outsourcing companies would set up offices in the US but
were largely restricted in their marketing and
created very few jobs, mostly for Indians. But Indian
IT giants such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata
Consultancy Services have now resorted to hiring
Western employees to penetrate the markets. An
indication of the global reach of Indian IT giants can
be gauged from the fact that Infosys
Technologies, which has risen to become the
country's second-largest software maker mainly due
to outsourced work from the West, has reversed
the trend by investing US$20 million to create
nearly 500 consulting jobs in the US. The company has
set up a subsidiary in Fremont, California, to
provide business consulting to US corporations. The
new company, Infosys Consulting, is "aggressively
hiring in America", Infosys chief executive
officer Nandan Nilekani said in a statement. "As
we are looking to expand our global footprint, we
are creating local employment in the countries we
operate." The company's American employees advise
US corporations on improving their efficiency by
embracing outsourcing and moving work to Infosys'
offices in India. Hiring Americans would help in
understanding the needs of the clients and
industry trends better, said Nilekani.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
has opened a training center in Buffalo, New York, as
part of its program to expand its US presence.
A global IT-services provider, TCS will provide
advanced IT training to new recruits. The training
center is aptly named "Chrysalis", a word
signifying the evolution of a larva into a
butterfly. Company executives explain that the
name alludes to the transformation of bright new
talent into advanced IT professionals who will
lead the technology industry in the future. The
firm said it has already hired 20 new recruits,
primarily from western New York, and has plans to
triple that number by the middle of next year.
In a meeting of two of
the biggest players in their respective fields, but
also a indicator of the kind of progress that India has
made in the one sector where it remains at
the cutting edge, TCS has tied up with Formula
One racing car champion Ferrari to
provide IT and engineering services for the team's car
for the 2005 season. TCS is the first Indian
company to enter the F1 arena. In addition, TCS
solutions will be part of the racing car's
high-selling counterpart, the Ferrari sports car.
Ferrari's chief designer, Rory
Byrne, says the Italian firm is in no hurry to bring out the
new car because the team wants to go deeper
into research and design. The TCS deal is making
that possible. Industry observers estimate that
the five-year deal may have been worth more than
$200 million. TCS is the first Indian software
company to cross the $1 billion mark in annual sales
(more than $1.5 billion in 2003-04), and in July
it launched the largest initial public offering by
an Indian private company, raising $1.2
billion.
Take 23-year-old Joshua
Bornstein for example. Faced with the prospect of job
cuts because of outsourcing, the native-born
American decided: if you can't beat them, join them.
He quit his job at an investment-banking firm in Los
Angeles and came to Bangalore, where he pays $110
a month to share a two-bedroom apartment with a
Japanese roommate. A New York Times report refers
to Bornstein: "He takes the company bus to work at
the Infosys campus, as lush and large as
Microsoft's in Seattle. He has Indian, European,
Israeli and Asian friends, and he has become a
familiar figure on this city's thriving pub scene
... He has become a member of a cosmopolitan
village that has formed as multinational companies
flock here, and Indian companies try to become
multinationals. The city is full of foreigners -
10,000 to 12,000 are registered here with the
government's office of foreign registration. At
some bars, the crowds are so mixed they look as if
they could be in London. The foreigners are
staffing multinational companies and filling
five-star hotels. Those here for longer stints are
living in exclusive housing complexes, and
international schools are springing up for their
children."
Observers say overseas
professionals feel comfortable working in these
firms as, over the years, they have imbibed global
practices that are inherent in their operations
now. As Indian companies continue to expand
operations worldwide, they have adapted their
management practices and strategies to compete in
the global marketplace. Until recently - even as
recently as a couple of years ago - most Indian
software companies employed Indians in key
positions around the world. A foreign onsite
posting or assignment was a plum perk that the
companies offered budding business professionals
and other consultants wishing to move to marketing
or sales. But Indian companies have now begun to
realize the significance of having "local hands in
local markets" and have started recruiting sales
and marketing people in local markets to represent
them. This has not only created a familiarity
among foreign workers about Indian firms and
India, but has also acted as a push for them to
look for placements there when the going gets
tough at home.
Priyanka Bhardwaj
is a New Delhi-based writer
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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