Home--News
The Coming Death Of Indian Outsourcing
Commentary by Sramana Mitra
Forbes
February 29, 2008
BURLINGAME, CALIF. - India is riding high on outsourcing.
Information technology and IT-enabled services will employ 4 million
people in 2008 and account for 7% of gross domestic product and 33%
of India's foreign-exchange inflows, according to Nasscom, an Indian
IT industry organization.
The death of this industry is far from anyone's mind.
However, the reality is that wages are rising in India. The cost advantage
for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best
1:3. Attrition is scary.
Jobs that are low value-added and easily automatable should and will
disappear over the next decade.
People talk a lot about India moving up the value chain. Some of that
has indeed happened. An industry that started gaining momentum when
Indian software developers were tapped to help fix the "Y2K" problems
in old software code has blossomed beautifully into one that offers
a much more comprehensive spectrum of services.
Yet, India, for all its glory, is still the world's back office. India's
tech industry is a "services" industry. The Indians don't do the thinking.
The customers do. India executes.
As a result, India has not learned to invent technology products of
its own. Barring a few exceptions, the huge amount of venture capital
chasing India finds it difficult to be deployed. There is way too
much money, way too few deals. Instead, tech-sector VCs are now diverting
capital to retail, real estate, hotels and other non-tech sectors.
India's $30 billion IT/ITES services industry, meanwhile, is slowly
and surely losing its competitive advantage.
Most of the 4 million people that the industry employs have now "arrived."
They have breezed through the milestones that their fathers had to
toil all their lives to reach. A phone. A watch. A TV. A car. A house.
They are complacent. They will not take risks. They have "outsourced"
thinking to their customers.
As the 1:3 cost structure becomes 1:1.5, it will soon become inefficient
to use Indian labor. Why not Oklahoma or British Columbia? For many
Europeans, Eastern Europe has already become more compelling than
India. The pure labor arbitrage equation will no longer balance.
ADP, the largest U.S. payroll services provider, has 45,000 employees
worldwide, of which only 2,500 are in India. It has around 1,000 workers
in El Paso, Texas, it's expanding a location in Augusta, Ga., and
it's opening a facility in Jackson, Miss. It's also growing a location
in Halifax, Canada. ADP isn't moving its workforce to India--it's
hedging its bets geographically. On a recent earnings call, ADP's
chief executive used terms such as "smartshoring," and "nearshoring"
to describe the strategy.
The software as a service (SaaS) megatrend in technology also plays
against India.
Here's an example: There's a tiny Silicon Valley start-up called InsideView.
It helps customers to generate sales leads, qualify those leads and
use technology tools to help find big sales opportunities for customers.
In November 2007, InsideView acquired a company called TrueAdvantage,
which did the exact same thing manually with a team of 150 people
in India. After the acquisition, InsideView moved all 2,500 of TrueAdvantage's
customers over to its SaaS solution. All 150 TruAdvantage employees
in India were laid off.
That's been a familiar tale in Detroit--but no so far in India. But
that's changing.
Indian powerhouses like Infosys and Wipro must diversify their portfolios
away from pure body-shopping and process competencies to technology-driven
advantages. They, too, could build--or acquire--SaaS businesses.
So far that's not happening. Infosys is still hiring thousands of
new employees in India every year. The mood is upbeat. Nasscom is
forecasting 25% annual growth in the Indian IT services industry for
the next few years. The golden goose is still laying large, warm eggs,
enough to feed the 4 million and their families, servants, chauffeurs
and cooks.
Meanwhile, the workforce is getting comfortable in their cubicle chairs,
just as the turkey gets comfortable before Thanksgiving.
Forbes recently published some scary statistics on wage inflation
in India. (See "Indian Employees Enjoying Swift Pay Hikes.") Salaries
rose 15.1% in 2007, up from 14.4% the previous year. The 2008 forecast:
15.2%. This would be the fifth consecutive year of salary growth above
10%.
Add to that the appreciation of the rupee against the weakening dollar,
and its impact on the labor arbitrage market.
Is the death of Indian outsourcing all that far off?
Assuming a 15% year-to-year salary hike rate, and a 2007 cost advantage
of 1:3 in favor of India, if U.S. wages remain constant, India's cost
advantage disappears by 2015. Then what?
FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. India Resource Center is making this article available in our efforts to advance the understanding of corporate accountability, human rights, labor rights, social and environmental justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|