Changing nature of outsourcing-let us understand!

The world is flat and India is at the epicenter of the flat world!

Outsourcing is Bangalore IT industry’s new cutting edge opportunity. It started in several forms, business process outsourcing to now so many other more focused areas.

The current mood in Bangalore is one of restlessness of youth employed in this sector, the typical average age group is 23-31 years and they represent a new skills set and experience that was not there a few years ago. That makes all the difference for the new India and the young India that is emerging fast.

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Some of the new technology produts from Apple, Sony Microsoft have changed the way we live and do our business.

Just now I read how  Singapore is the number one tech-savvy economy. Beating America to the fifth position in the”Networked Readiness Index” by the World Economic Forum. U.S.lost its top position after a three year reign.  Americans are ahead of others in innovative technologies and  marketing strategies and still dominates in its high quality scientific research institutions and business schools and other indicators of high development including venture capital market which had spurred innovation.

India and China have improved their positions at 39 and 41! Japan and South Korea are close rivals in this game of innovative technologies. Some of the world’s best known brands have come from these three countries.
My own favourite brands, among companies are IBM, Sony and now Apple. A reflection on what these mean for our lives and activities.

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Middle class American dream turns sour?

Record job losses for IT employees! World events affect students careers.September 11th, economic slowdown, IT meltdown, Enron collapse. All these have severely hit the career prospects of young Indians. September 11th hit the H 1B Visa seekers, the IT professionals whose American dreams shattered, as America tightened its rules for American visas.
Hence there is a steep decline in US visas, visa seekers numbers declined and so in the US too Indian IT professionals lost jobs in Silicon Valley. Also at home the events forced the high salary holders to lose jobs, their ESOPs became paper profits and there is gloom. Engineers from IITs are seeking admissions into MBA courses instead of the usual route of campus recruitments by the IT majors.

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India’s big breakthrough in technological skills now!

Yes, this is no exaggeration! Indians now seem to be achieving highest world class skills in a variety of technological skills. There is now a revolution unprecedented. I mean the IT revolution. A new generation of highly skilled engineering graduates, a few lakhs, who have transformed into a software super power.

Of course, the industry leaders like Narayanamurthy had cautioned us, pointing out we are still a miniscule software exporter, considering the world market. China’s IT export is to touch 200 billion dollars! But the point is that this achievement, reached so far, had transformed the minds and imaginations of the new generation. India is now the “call centre” of the world, the 1,00,000 young men and women are earning in figures what their elders couldn’t have imagined all their government service jobs, just a generation ago.

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He can’t compare India with China! He should ask Indian achievers!

The Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was in Bangalore recently. He met the state leaders, fine. Bangalore is the IT capital of India. Some of the best success stories in IT, Biotechnology are here. One doesn’t know what the PM had seen and learnt from the Bangalore’s successes, be it technology, or infrastructure. Bangalore is equally proud of its urban governance. So, from faster economic growth to urban infrastructure development to effective governance models, Bangalore can teach lots of lessons for the Central government.
Even in the planning processes, the IT CEOs have shared lots of thoughts with the public. Industry leaders like Azim Premji, Nandan Nilekani, Kiran Karnik, not to speak of the redoubtable Narayanamurthy are some of the achievers. Kiran Mazumdar is another achiever in the biotech sphere. One hopes the PM had taken back with him the thoughts and experiences of these leaders. And yet, one sees the PM also talking, as he did not long ago, asking Indian industry to “emulate the China model!”

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Confidence, energy and a new upbeat mood!

India, a happening place?
Yes, yes, say observers. Go anywhere in Bangalore and what you see is the furious speed! Why? There is development on all fronts. Rising glass and concrete can’t but dazzle you. There are all the big names in MNCs, the new economy names: Intel, IBM, Oracle, Accenture and what else. All are in Bangalore, now it seems for permanent settling down!
More cheering for the country, for the ordinary men and women is the fact that is a rising employment generation for the best qualified. Be they, IT pros, new type high entrepreneurs, Internet businesses or BPO or even engineer and doctors, they are all now coming back to India. Yes, home coming is the new phenomenon, the new reverse migration. The growing offshoring combined with rising employment opportunities in India is drawing Indian IT professionals settled abroad, back to the country. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), between 2001 and 2004 roughly 25,000 Indian IT professionals settled abroad have opted to return to the country. And this number is rising.

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Some of the new technology products from Apple, Sony, Microsoft have changed the way we live and do our business

Just now I read how Singapore is the number one tech-savvy economy. Beating America to the fifth position in the”Networked Readiness Index” by the World Economic Forum. U.S.lost its top position after a three year reign.
Americans are ahead of others in innovative technologies and marketing strategies and still dominates in its high quality scientific research institutions and business schools and other indicators of high development including venture capital market which had spurred innovation. Read the rest of this entry »

Our leaders must understand the young generations mood

Yes, the CPI (M) Politbureau that met in New Delhi recently saw the West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee clashing with his colleagues over the need for banning any strikes in the IT sector in the State. West Bengal under the now wise CM is trying to get out of a stagnant phase that was started by no less a veteran Communist than the venerable Jyoti Basu. Basu was also present along with the new boss, Prakash Karat, the more bourgeois type middle class urbane Communist.What was shocking is that these highly dedicated and also highly off-tract men had the gumption to say that IT is not an essential service!
It is what is the limit to go on strike. In Kerala, in Trivandrum, in front of the Secretariat, right in the face of the CM’s office, there is a permanent shelter where strikes, bandhs is a daily occurrence. We can see what Kerala and West Bengal had become economically backward. In Kolkatta too the daily parade of striking workers was once a routine. Not any more. Under the current CM there is a wide realisation the State had to move with the world. So, the IT industry is getting all sorts of preferred attention. The CPI (M) politibureau has some old hands like M.K. Pandhe, had the guts to speak for the need to organise IT workers elsewhere, notably in Bangalore. For which the IT industry body, NASSCOM, came out with a rebuttal saying IT workers are now what is called “knowledge workers” a term innovated by Peter Drucker, some 30 years ago and now the term had transformed into a new work culture for an entire generation. As it was said knowledge workers are not workers in the conventional sense, they are potential entrepreneurs in their own sense. Everyone of them is expecting to set up his or her own start-ups and this motivation is entirely new to the Indian environment. This is the generation when the youngsters who in their early twenties start with a very high salary their fathers would have got at the end of their entire long career in government or outside.

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Economic development yes, but not enough social development. Hopes lie in new technologies.

The UN Human Development Report 2005 puts India in the 127th rank out of some nearly 200 countries and credits India a success story in the globalising world. Poverty fallen to somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent from the early 36 per cent syndrome. The exact figures still disputed. The consensus is that in spite of our good economic performance our poverty decline is not yet a success story! The point for us here is that the UN Report says still in India, progress in child and infant mortality are slowing down! Yes, we have the IT revolution and our pride in being the Software Super.

This status is put to shame by the UN report by the stark fact that one in eleven Indian children dies in the first five years of life. Why? Because we don’t come up with any new low-technology, low-cost interventions. Malnutrition has bared improved over the past decade. About “one in 4 girls and more than one in 10 boys don’t attend primary school”. The Indian poverty belt is now in the Northern states of Bihar, MP, UP and W.Bengal.

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Are we optimists or pessimists?

The Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, was in India for four days, his fourth visit to India and he spoke glowingly about India looking futuristic with enormous human skills. The last 10 years had been the best so far in Indian history. Microsoft will invest 1.7 billion dollars in the next few years, also the Gates Foundation has committed huge sums for combating India’s health problems.

Not long before the Intel chief was here and he too promised investments of a billion dollars. Both these world’s leading technology companies have big India operations,both have their operations side by side in Bangalore. I pass through their sites almost everyday! So, I am reminded everyday, the power of the globalisation process on in India!

India is at the very centre of the Globalisation process, India is creating lot of new wealth in IT. All Indians are now globalising Indians, right?

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