India is gradually emerging as an important hub for R&D outsourcing and back office outsourcing. All the major companies in the business of technology, financial services are rushing to India for opening up R&D or back office centres. This is due to the reason that India offers a number of advantages like availability of large talent pool, presence of quality infrastructure of some important cities, enabling government policies and a number of other beneficial factors. India is the second largest software exporter in the world, with software exports projected to reach of $70 Billion by 2008. Also it is estimated that by 2020, 47% of the Indian population will fall between 15 and 59 years of age, an increase of 12% from the current 35%.
Human Resource
India has by far the one of the largest pool of technical talent, with nearly 300,000 engineering professionals graduating every year from nearly 1100 institutions across the country. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) are the institutions of international standing. In over 9,000 degree colleges across the country, English has been the most preferred medium of education for many decades. The manpower availability, skill base and English knowledge base that an Indian company offers are key factors for success of any IT assignment outsourced to India.
India’s has largest number of technology certified employees (Microsoft, Java, Oracle, Networking and others) which offer an ideal USP for technology centric outsourcing assignments. Nearly 35% of Silicon Valley startups are by Indians.
Cost Advantage
Outsourcing to India has become most successful ways to increase cost effectiveness. This is largely due to lowering of operations cost, which includes the costs of labor, real estate, telecom, and utilities. Many Fortune 500 companies have started outsourcing to India and saved substantial amount of money which is added to their botoomlines. It is estimated that that outsourcing to India, saves nearly 70% than in any of the European or North American countries.
Quality Advantage
India has highest numer of CMM/ISO certified companies in all over the world. May Fortune 500 comapanies like Microsoft, IBM, CISCO, etc. have started their R&D centres in India by tapping the local talent.
Companies Outsourcing to India
Some of the companies which are outsourcing their work to India or which has R&D centres in India are:
- GE
- Citigroup
- Microsoft
- Oracle
- IBM
- Google
- JP Mrogan Chase
- Morgan Stanley
- Goldman Sachs