Source: Financial Express

When the trend of off-shoring / outsourcing started, Indian IT professionals were given low-end computational work such as web designing, web development, coding, and programming for global majors.  That has become passé, as they have proven they are not only talented and skilled, but immensely capable of delivering top quality higher-end work for a fraction of what IT professionals in home countries charge.

This has led to a new breed of service providing manpower being spawned in India, one with complex degrees and sophisticated skill-sets ready to take on high-end product development, Research & Development (R&D), IT services, both for overseas and domestic companies.  Likewise, job profiles in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector are undergoing considerable changes.  New recruits to the industry continue to be fresh graduate, but professionals with degrees like M.Tech, CA, MBA, ICWA, etc. are showing a keenness to work in domain-specific back-office fields like advisory, analytical and consulting areas.

According to Kiran Karnik, President NASSCOM: “While India's IT prowess is unquestionable, the success was based on a strategy focused on the country's competitive advantage.  First and foremost, because of the English language skills of its population, India has a competitive advantage over other foreign suppliers providing IT services on an outsourcing basis to the US market and other major English speaking markets.”

Today, the excellent language skills of the Indian workforce are complemented by high levels of education, as it is 55% or half of all Indians working in California’s high-tech IT industry have a MS or Ph.D. degree to their name.  On the home turf, 81% of software professionals have a graduate or post-graduate degree, 17% with M.Techs, MBAs, ICWAs, CAs, 69% with B.Techs, BEs, MCAs, and 14% are graduates or diploma holders.

With access to a talented labour pool with necessary IT skills for software development and to provide IT services for overseas markets, Indian IT companies have worked at broadening skill sets to perform complex work.  Their hardwork and training has accomplished brilliant results as the complexity of work being off-shored / outsourced increases with each passing day.  NASSCOM reports a tech-ready, tech-trainable work force in excess of 750,000.  From 2000 to 2004, employment in the IT and ITeS industries grew 30.1%, tripling and touching the 1-million mark by end-2005.

India, annually graduates 250,000 students with engineering degrees and 500,000 with non-engineering, all geared to take up employment in the IT and IT-related sectors.  But, the number of students graduating with engineering / technical degrees has increased due to higher income levels in jobs in the field and an increasing number of technical institutions starting up to take up the challenge of providing enough educated, talented and skilled workforce for India’s every increasing slice of the off-shoring / outsourcing pie.

NASSCOM statistics confirm that despite China’s entry into the off-shoring / outsource service providing market, India has an advantage over China and other competing countries.  Much to its disadvantage, China does not graduate enough qualified, technical engineers, only 50,000 engineers graduate with the necessary skills for global employment, whereas Indian schools churn out 290,000 per year.

While, India employed 284,000 IT / ITes / BPO professionals in 1999-2000, that number has grown to 1-million in 2004-2005, and growing by 150,000 in the last year alone.  While ITeS / BPO employees saw the highest growth levels over the last few years due to the tremendous demand for Indian service providers by multinationals off-shoring / outsourcing, 94,000 professionals will take up employment in the ITeS / BPO sector, but in the same period, 109,000 IT professionals will be taken on board by IT services and software companies.

Already, India ranks as the world’s leading off-shoring / outsourcing destination for IT and BPO, and will sustain its leading position.  With IT / ITeS / BPO providing services from off-shore destinations projected to grow by 24% to $94-billion by 2008, India is set to grow by 31% to $48-billion, 51% of the global total by 2008.  Last year alone, the ITeS / BPO sector in India hired an estimated 400-employees for each working day of the year.

The demand for Indian skilled domain specialists, software analysts, integration specialists, information security, database administrators, communication engineers, network specialists, data warehousing and semi-conductor design continues to grow apace, as Indian professionals make their mark in the IT and IT service related field.

To conclude, a quote by NASSCOM President, Mr Karnik: “While the offshore phenomenon may have started on cost, Indian IT service vendors have proved that cost competitiveness is not the only advantage they have to offer.  Today, Indian companies are recognised as much for their high degree of quality orientation.”

Quality and cost are the reasons that India has become and will continue to remain the favourite off-shoring / outsourcing destination of the world.  And, from low-end work, it has graduated to research and development for IT majors such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco Systems and many others.  It is not going to be easy to dislodge India from its coveted position of the Number One off-shore/ outsourcing service provider!