India is Outsourcing Outsourcing

Have a look at this article from NY Times: Outsourcing Works, So India is Exporting Jobs.

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MYSORE, India — Thousands of Indians report to Infosys Technologies’ campus here to learn the finer points of programming. Lately, though, packs of foreigners have been roaming the manicured lawns, too.

Many of them are recent American college graduates, and some have even turned down job offers from coveted employers like Google. Instead, they accepted a novel assignment from Infosys, the Indian technology giant: fly here for six months of training, then return home to work in the company’s American back offices.

India is outsourcing outsourcing.

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Why I Hate the Term Outsourcing

By Abhijit Nadgouda, Guest Author

What do you think of when you hear the word outsourcing? I think of something that it is not. Traditional outsourcing is defined as contracting with another company or person to do a particular function. Many of us do this for two primary reasons:

* We give it to the corresponding experts if we do not have the expertise with us.
* We have the expertise, but we do not have enough time to do the task.

This happens across industries and across departments. It helps you focus on your task, achieve the bigger vision better and build a relationship in the industry. It also helps you keep your entity lean and fit without the need to use ad-hoc expansion plans. Overall outsourcing has a value proposition which can help you build your business in an easier and better way. However, recently outsourcing has been flagging another aspect quite vigorously which has overshadowed all its benefits; and all credit to the software industry for this. >>>

IBM: “India Is More Than Good”

At the heels of Apple pulling out of India comes IBM’s announcement that they will triple their investment in India to $6 Billion over the next 3 years.

In the past three years, the company has invested more than $2 billion in India and increased staff from 9,000 to 43,000, becoming the largest foreign employer in the country. India is IBM’s second-largest base of operations, trailing only the U.S., which has 125,000 of IBM’s 330,000 people.

Earlier, Cisco and Microsoft have already announced Billions of dollars of investment commitment into growing their India presence.

IBM has followed the strategy of building mutliple operations in different parts of India, and has large offices in Bangalore, Pune, Gaugaon, Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta. In the next round of investment, I am sure they will also tap into Hyderabad and Chennai, as well as other second tier cities. The sheer volume of their hiring needs offer them the opportunity to follow
The Team Of Twenty One philosophy.

Recently, a friend of mine came by to brainstorm about his career strategy. With a Bachelors from IIT Bombay, a PhD from Stanford, and several years of work experience in the US, his is a classic profile that feels velocity constrained in the US, but his career could absolutely fly in India, given the country’s hunger for Grade A engineering talent and leadership.

Of late, I have been advising all my Indian friends who are doing engineering careers in the US to go back to India. Interestingly enough, most of them have been in the US for a dozen plus years, and want to only return to a city where they have friends and / or family, and do not have to rebuild a social network from scratch.

I wonder to what extent employers understand and leverage this socio-cultural dynamic!

Apple: “India Is Not Good Enough”

Long time ago, at a supremely formative juncture of his life, Steve Jobs had visited India. It was an experience that had touched him deeply, moved him unexpectedly, and changed him fundamentally.

In light of that, Apple’s recent departure after 2 months of experimentation with an India operation seems rather callous.

No one knows the WHY. I don’t know either. I knew that Sina Tamaddon and Jean Marie Hulot were exploring the option of setting up a development center in India. This scrapped unit is not a development unit, but a call center. Also to be noted is that Jean Marie has since left Apple, one of the several high level departures (along with Jon Rubenstein, Avi Tevanian, Nancy Heinen).

I do have some thoughts on why Bangalore is (was) about the worst location choice that Apple could have possibly made.

Apple is a cult. Employees drink the water that trickles down from the fountain, after washing Steve Jobs’ feet. In Indian religious terminology, this is called Charanamrita (literal translation: the ambrosia that flows from the feet of the Lord). This presupposes the fact that Apple enjoys tremendous employee loyalty. Jobs expects ultimate loyalty from everyone (he offers loyalty to no one, but that’s a different topic).

This culture would NEVER fit with Bangalore’s mercenary Information Technology / BPO workers. They don’t even know how to spell loyalty. They couldn’t care less about cults. Show me the money is the mantra that prevails at the end of the day, and the best Apple could have hoped for, is a 600 person call center with 40%-60% churn.

Against that backdrop, Apple, I suspect, felt lost.

The mistake Apple made, I think, is Bangalore.

Not India.

There are other places in India where people’s emotions run high, loyalty IS valued and offered to those who deserve it. Passion comes before Price. It is there, that Apple could have found its soul connection.

Not in the cultural desert of Bangalore.